


Clairé Obscure

by QueenNorthway



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: AU, Angst, Bartender AU, Canon LGBTQ Character, Canon LGBTQ Male Character, Collage, Depression, Everyone questions Will's plans for the future even himself, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Humor, Implied Nico di Angelo/Jason Grace, Jason just wants to do the right thing, LGBTQ, M/M, Nico is bitter, Nurse AU, Romance, Secrets, Social Justice, Street artist au, UPDATED TAGS PAST THIS ONE, alternative universe, author is going to hell and not only for the lesbian thing but this is such a slow burn, denial of depression, everyone is co-dependent and every character has progression, everything is dark, everything is dark but only because 98 percent takes place at night, famous!piper, grafitti au, nico di angelo/happiness, no one escapes character developement, queennorthway, secretssssssss, solangelo, street art, vlog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 46,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5494262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenNorthway/pseuds/QueenNorthway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nico's a street artist, sharing apartments with Leo, working part-time as a bartender with Annabeth. There's been months since he'd tried to really create something worth mentioning. Now, he's finally got on his feet and claimed a virgin wall close to a hospital when this idiot nurse keeps interrupting his sessions at 4am.<br/>Will is all about safety and not fond of vandalism, but he can't deny how much this grumpy midget amuses him after working over-time. Here comes this beautiful boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders and Will wants to see he converts this onto a city wall.<br/>//AKA the one where Annabeth cries over stress, Jason is in the police academy and Nico hates it, Nico knows parkour, Piper is a budding celebrity, Percy cripples with guilt from the blood on his hands, Leo and Jason is in some deep shit, Hazel owns a store, and only one of them is actually getting a college degree although three of them tried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Streaks

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of art with works of art in it. I used to be a graffiti artist myself, and this is an AU in which the Seven(+) lives mortal lives and their lives keeps getting intervined with each other. This is not a fic for solemnly Solangelo - although we don't go into dept with another ship - but more like an alternative universe where we see how Nico and Will's lives are being affected by the other characters.  
> "Clairé Obscure" is my first fic for Solangelo, although I've written some questionable naruto stuff in the past.
> 
> I watch Grey's Anatomy and that's where all the hospital stuff comes from. I work in a bar as a guard, not a bartender.
> 
> // EDIT: I started writing this fic christmas 2015 and the characterisations of Kayla and Austin is WAY OFF since the first Trials of Apollo book came out five months later. Especially Austin, oh my g od, im so sorry for that one. I am going to go back and edit their looks as well.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico climbs a wall and Leo interrupts his shower. Will is tired and a man eats sweaters

It is not that Will wasn’t sanitary, it was just that he didn’t need Lou Ellen to point out how gross his hair got after working a 24 hour shift every so often. Her appearance would have faltered too if she had chosen a career that made you stand on your feet for longer than was actually legal in this country. Will wasn’t going to complain too much, though, he just didn’t _love_ feeling like he needed ten showers after helping a victim of a car crash for four point five hours. Monitors kept beeping in his head until he fell asleep in his own bed. At least the blood was flattering on his scrubs, he thought through the misery.

The sound of his shuffling feet echoed in the dim-lit alley as he dragged himself home. The nights in this town were usually misty and made it a bit harder to breathe, but tonight he could see the sky as clearly as the light posts would allow him and he sent a quick thanks to the heavens. His bag gnawed on his shoulder even though it only contained a water bottle, pens and a notebook, but after a full day and night with no rest, it felt like bricks.

He liked to take this route home, through mostly narrow streets and alleys – yes, it posed a problem with the criminal activity at 4am in the morning but he _managed_ – until it led him into an open area with a small park on the left, and a dead end used-to-be parking space with three tall cement walls ten meters tall, on the right. Will was all about safety. Well. Safety for _others_. This route was coloured with varying street art, in different styles, and yeah, maybe some were offensive in their way of demanding sexual attention from women or showing the government their opinion in the most grotesque ways, but most was a war cry against something. Especially the past few years had more graffiti of the oppressive treatment from the local police been spotted all over the city, but it was still some more mysterious street art that was way too deep for a person like Will to understand. He could barely see most of them in the little light applied by the apartment windows above him, and he almost tripped over a bag of _something_ , before the alley opened up for him to see the park.

Will straightened up a bit when the fake lightning faded from his view and he gazed upwards. Not many stars but more than usual. Feet kicking the small rocks as he passed the dead end, he caught a glimpse of unusual white on his right. It didn’t make any sense that he’d spotted it, seeing as he could barely see the ground a few paces before him, but he could clearly see white lines that had certainly _not_ been there when he went to work a day ago. Will inched closer, remembering the used-to-be parking lot was not a straight walk, and hunched as the ground steeped a little downward. The far back wall of the area had been recently decorated with seemingly random white lines. It looked like a child’s drawing of some feverish bird, Will mused. He touched one of the paint strokes, or spray marks, and it came off smudged and wet on his hand.

He must have just missed the tagger.

It didn’t look like spray paint, although Will knew little of the topic. It was more like white outlining of what was soon to come, unless the artist meant for it to be a mess of unorganized white lines, which, Will shrugged, would probably be artistic still.

He checked the time on his phone and groaned, turning around to head back to the street. It was 4:14am and is he was to get any sleep, he should already be home, snoring.

He jogged half-heartedly home and not caring about brushing his teeth as he hit the matrass and blacked out instantly.

-*-

Nico cursed himself. His back slid off the cement wall and he peered down in the parking lot. _That was way too close_. Then he cursed his slacking off the past year and started slipping himself down the wall, rope burning his exposed fingers. He had mistakenly picked the place where sound doesn’t carry into the painting space before it’s almost too late, so he hadn’t heard the stranger until he could see him. Nico had nearly yelped as he struggled to turn off his flashlight and climbing the wall in one staggered motion.

It’s not like Nico thought the stranger would call the cops on him, but times like these were personal to him. And it’s been so long since he really tried to _create_ something. Something worth having the public mentioning. This time he had really dug into the void of the back of his mind and it was _private_. So why decorate a public wall with it, Leo had asked several times and Nico had just shrugged him off.

His feet hit the pavement with a flat tump. Nico started pulling the rope from the fastener and throwing it in his backpack as it landed by his feet. It felt rough and strange on his fingers. Nico frowned, but didn’t give it more thought. One quick look to make sure he had all his belongings, then he started for the lit sideway. As he rounded a corner he started sprinting down the alleys towards his block, the smacks of his flat shoes on damp pavement echoed in the night.

Nico didn’t run into anyone on his 15 minutes sprint, which was _wonderful_. He didn’t need his cover blown because who wouldn’t look at a hooded shadow running with eyes like empty graveyards and dressed in all black. The spray paint bottles clanked in his backpack and Nico winched every so often from the sharp sound.

He rounded his block and fumbled with the keys, finally letting the exhaustion take him as he let the outside door screech closed behind him. Nico tried to control his ragged breath as he hauled himself up four flights of stairs. The elevator wasn’t working and he would soon be glaring at the reason for that as he unlocked the door to apartment 6. He scowled at the sight of the Latino spread across the bed like a star fish, with a piece of duct tape on his chin and motor oil smeared over his hands. _I’ve never actually seen him apply motor oil to anything. Hm._

Nico sleepishly shuffled over to the bed-more-like-floor-mattress and kicked Leo in the leg.

Leo groaned and waved a hand in the opposite direction. “ _Vete…_ ” he mumbled from the pillow.

“The hell I will, jackass.” Nico threw his bag in the corner and his shoulders slumped instantly. He ran a hand over his face and made a mental note to not look in the mirror until tomorrow morning. He could tell he looked like hell and probably five times more tired than he usually did. “I’ve been at it for… 48 hours, _probably_ , so pl–“

Leo’s light snoring cut through the air and Nico glared daggers at the ‘Team Leo’ logo on his back.

Nico zipped off his hoodie and threw it in the direction of the closet before starting to push Leo’s limps towards one end of the bed. Nico could feel sleep tug on his eyelids as he slumped onto the other half of the mattress, his back to Leo, who was making an _nnnnnn_ sound in his undisturbed sleep. Nico considered bribing him out of the bed, but the Italian doubted Leo would be able to stay awake long enough to listen to his offer.

As sleep took the second resident of the bed, Nico vaguely thanked whatever god that was listened because he could finally, after so many months, he could finally _breathe_.

-*-

He woke slowly, begrudgingly, the next morning as the morning sun illuminated his room. Will had tried blinds, he really had, but he always seemed to wake with the sun no matter what. He had stopped trying to avoid the inevitable and didn’t use the blinds any more. Will Solace – a scholar, ever the perfectionist, did all his paperwork, his favourite food being broccoli – needed caffeine to jolt start his brain. He looked around his room, more like apartment, but he had a roommate with their own room, so, really, Will’s room was bedroom/living room/kitchen while his roommate’s was just bedroom/broom closet. When he had tried to argue about it, Will’s roommate had made a statement that “ _all the meds books’re spread even in_ my _room, Solace, bugger off_ ” and something about Will’s lack of social life so he won’t be having ‘visitors’ anyway.

He could feel himself nodding off and smacked himself, got on his feet, and waggled into the kitchen. When drinking his bitter coffee as he leaned against the counter, he briefly considered a morning jog when the apartment door burst open.

Cecil, wicked grin and green eyes on fire, threw the door shut dramatically and eyed Will. He straightened. Cecil waited.

Will squinted at him over his coffee, taking the bait. “You didn’t come home last night.”

Cecil’s smile faltered. “You didn’t check when you got here at the un-god-li- _est_ hour? Will!”

“Hey, you do autopsys with Kayla on hour 22 and see how much you wanna waste 10 more seconds checking if your roommate is crashing here or at Lou’s.”

Cecil crossed his arms and lifted his chin at him. “But what if I wasn’t.”

Will rolled his eyes. “You always are.” He drained his coffee and went back into the kitchen, Cecil following him.

“What if I found this beautiful girl, _dazzling_ female exhibit, with eyes like heaven and ass like hell-“ Will grimaced. “-aaand she turned out to be a murderer? Or a psychopath? Or both?” Cecil stole one of Will’s toasts and spoke while chewing, sending crumbs everywhere. “What if she made me eat hats with different fabrics and got off on it and I died? What then?”

“Then,” Will said, brushing a few of Cecil’s crumbs off his slacks. “Then I would identify your body at the hospital.”

Cecil scoffed. “You really think she’d let my body be found that easily? No, she’s too skilled for that, man. She’ll write a message on my corpse’s back with a burning curling iron and bury me for future generations to find.”

“Are we still talking about a hypothetical person, Cecil.”

“Yeah, why?” He seemed honestly confused. Then he grabbed Will’s arm. “Wait, have you met her? Dude, do you know her? _Does she know where you live, ‘cause Solace I swear-_ “

Will waved him off, a fond smile spreading across his face. “No, no, of course not. We just had a similar case at work. A man was obsessed with glitter. Or maybe anything sparkly. For clothing. And he would eat it, not even tear off pieces, just stuffing the whole thing down his throat. His chart said he had been admitted to seven different hospitals the past two months for choking on fabric. He went through surgery and they found _spangles_ in his stomach. I don’t even wanna know what they found in his feces.”

“Aw, man,” Cecil complained through the toast. “I’m eating!”

“ _My_ food.”

“How do you sleep at night.” Cecil was raiding the fridge for more food, said an accusing _aha!_ and came back up with a jar of blueberry jam which he decided to eat with a spoon.

Will slowly nibbled his toast. “How Lou Ellen sleeps at night is more impressing.” Cecil agreed with another _aha_. “She’s the one who calls all the dead people’s families and have to listen to their crying while she paints her nails.”

“Do you think she gets off on misery?” Cecil asked. Will shrugged. “You think redemption favours the one who brings bad news?” Will shrugged again.

Then Will finished his toast and found his trainers as Cecil revealed his leftover pie from Lou’s place – apple pie, which meant she was in a good mood – and assaulted it with blueberry jam. Will mourned a perfectly good pie when he stepped out into the misty morning of city life.

-*-

Nico di Angelo wasn’t a people person. He wasn’t even a person person. He was barely a cat person. That being said he thought his kick to Leo’s calf was justified. Nico wasn’t a morning person either and he had stated this to Leo’s calf as a form of apology.

“Dude, it’s six o’clock,” Leo accused from somewhere above him.

Nico groaned and curled in on himself. “Fuck _off_ , Valdez. Then I only got an hour.” He nuzzled into his comforter, not remembering there being a comforter on the matrass-made-bed when he’d gone to sleep.

“ _PM_ , di Angelo.” Leo seemed annoyed.

Oh. _Oh_. He’d slept through most of the day and now it was late afternoon. Nico’s head jerked up and he peered groggily at Leo’s leg. It was hairy and scarred, and his most recent scars being pink and child-like contrasting his darker bronze skin. Nico glanced up to his face. Leo was grinning smugly, showing off his leg like a showgirl.

“Like what you see, huh?” Leo mused. Nico rolled over with an _ugh_ and tried to sleep again, but Leo was insistent. “You told me to wake you before your drug store closed on Thursdays. Why do you bother with a regular schedule when it would only make it easier for the cops to get to you?”

Nico threw his comforter off and laid on his back. “I’m not even on a regular schedule yet.” Leo mumbled something about irregular sleeping patterns. “ _Sta 'zitto_ , Valdez. None of my business is during sun hours, now ‘ _vete_ ’ or whatever, yourself.”

Leo shrugged and went back to a probable project in apartment 7 Nico would have to stop later.

Nico laid a while longer, sort of wishing he knew which one of the places was in his name. Apartment 6 and 7 were both singles, meaning it was a combo of bedroom and kitchen, with a small bathroom and one window. They’d both moved in the same day, across the hall from each other, but since then they’d spent so much time at each other’s place eating or watching movies that somewhere along the lines, they’d forgotten which place was in their name. Turns out, in the end it didn’t really matter. Leo got electronic experiments and fuel tests and engine pieces in both apartments and Nico had grease stained black jeans and dirty dishes in 7 and his empty spray paint cans littered the closet in 6.

Leo had told him to clean out 6’s closet once, but Nico had told him it would ruin the irony.

Grumpy and tired from sleeping too long, he got up from the matrass-wannabe-bed and shuffled into the bathroom in 6. Leo was watching Spanish news on his computer, on the floor, his feet kicking the air as his hands absentmindedly dismantled pieces of steal and putting them back together. Nico caught the general meaning of the news casting. Not that he knew Spanish, but messing with their friends was the one passion Leo and Nico both shared. They’d discovered if they spoke really slowly and very clearly, they could understand each other somewhat. Not enough to write on a resumé, much to Leo’s disdain, but enough to have their own private conversations in a group, resulting in jealous hate and they loved it.

Piper knew French and Annabeth spoke Swedish fluently, but Swedish was a Germanic language and Nico's accent made is harder for Piper's French to interpret. And Leo and Nico practised. Well, more like swearing each other full and not bothering to switch back to English. It was a small pleasure in Nico’s eternally numb life.

He stepped in front of the mirror and remembered why he waited until now to see himself. His olive skin was tinted with white paint and he had a particularly large smudge on his jaw. His eyes were tired and sinful – nothing different. Black knots of thick curls spiked in every direction and he had a cowlick he had already given up on fighting. The sleep less circles under his eyes were ever-present.

As Nico undressed to take a shower he heard Leo from the other room mute the news and answering his phone, knocking over their vaccumer doing so. He opened the shower curtains and got in as Leo exclaimed something along the lines of _“-ou absolutely sure- Grace, ‘cause if you- I swear to God-“_ Nico shrugged and turned the knots. Water erupted from the showerhead. Leo erupted from the bathroom door.

“Leo, what the hell,” Nico grumbled. He peeked out from the shower curtain. Leo just stood there _bouncing_ in front of the sink. “Does privacy mean nothing to you? Get _out! ‘Vete’!_ ”

Leo had a lopsided grin made for criminals that were smart enough to be a genius but turned out crazy. “That was Jason. He just talked to Piper, who just talked to Percy. The university is hosting a _fair_ , Nico! For anyone to enter.” Leo was ecstatic and started bouncing more rapidly. “Do you know what this _means_?! This is my chance, and I might actually make it this time!”

Nico slowly started to follow his trail of thoughts, cursing his grogginess. Leo didn’t get into the engineering program there because of his grades from high school, but this fair was a chance for him to maybe get their attention with his creations rather than a grade showing how many push-ups he could take. “Percy said the professors would be there?”

Leo shook his head, grin still in place. “No, but why wouldn’t they be?”

_Their own family and friends might be taking up their time._ Nico didn’t want to tell Leo he shouldn’t get his hopes up, because he had every right to be excited. Leo was tired too. He liked his job at the Garage and he had a knack for it, but after two years, he knew everything there was to know about cars and he knew engines by heart. He wanted to _learn_ something _useful_. He wanted to _be_ useful, in his own words. He wanted to get a degree. Nico admired him for that – for knowing what he wanted in life, for having something to stride after.

Nico remembered the water was running and they hated the electric bill.

He pointed to the door. “I don’t know, but get out, Leo. I can’t clean myself with you in here – _leave._ ” Leo left, still bouncing, with a comment about how the cupbearers never left the gods in the bath alone. Nico rolled his eyes, regretted it immediately as he got soap in them, and cried in the shower like some romcom protagonist.


	2. Ragged Lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico is NOT a fucking wizard and Will loves his own shoes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> who updates on christmas eve, norwegian time, when their relatives are still downstairs? a sinner

“Ya kno’, one hour of sun won’t kill you.” Cans clinked and shuddered in the storage while Hazel was checking the stock. Nico stood by the counter and waited, scribbling a drawing on his hand with Hazel’s pen. He could hear creaks from the small stool she was using. It was a small shop, mainly maintenance stuff stacking the shelves under dim lightning. It was a small and sweet place in its own manner; low ceiling and warm brown painted walls, making your cheeks heat like sitting in front of a fireplace in a cottage.

“Um… Could you please… not… do that?” Nico glanced up from his doodled hand to Frank Zhang. He stood awkwardly on the other side of the counter, not quite knowing what to do with his hands, not quite meeting Nico’s eyes.  

Nico didn’t stop drawing his hand blue. Frank Zhang could get his pen back when Hazel brought his order from the back.

“You could get ink poisoning,” Frank Zhang whispered, like it was a secret.

Nico realized he was concerned for his customer’s well-being and not necessarily Nico using up all the best pens every Thursday. It was nice. He grumbled something and put the pen away, not quite meeting Frank Zhang’s eyes either. “And what would I get from spraying all these bitches onto any solid surface I find?” Nico asked, gesturing towards the shelf of spray paint cans on the wall.

Frank Zhang eyed them and considered. He shrugged. “Lung cancer, maybe?”

Hazel appeared in the shop, walking to the counter carrying a white anonymous box. “You’re _not_ getting cancer on me, not in this lifetime, Grey-13.” Her New Orleans accent slipping through, cutting off the ends of words and stretching her vocals. She scanned it and handed him the receipt. Hazel was a small girl, the kind of height one usually called ‘midget’ if it weren’t for Hazel’s presence being as grounding as Frank Zhang’s. He might be tall and more eye catching in a room, but once you’ve seen Hazel you couldn’t un-see her. Frank Zhang wanted to slip into a wall and be invisible; Hazel stood out with her golden curls illuminating her soft, dark face and kind eyes like melting treasures.

“Did you _include_ a Grey-13?” Nico always had to special order a colour they didn’t originally have, Grey-13, causing them the extra trouble. He refused to give up his name on the orders, but he was the only one who wanted to make their lives difficult, so he signed off as Grey-13.

Hazel smiled at him like a mother smiled at her son after a soccer game, even though Nico was older than her. “’Course I did, ya’ dofus. Could’ve given us more of a warning than half an hour before we close, though. Frank’s been bustin’ his butt all day with new deliveries.”

Nico accepted the box of cans with a slightly puzzled look. “You’ve had traffic today? Who else?”

Frank Zhang nodded towards the board by the door. “Some of them stayed to claim walls. Some of them got pissed at your wall.” Nico went over to the infamous board. There were many stores in the city that sold spray paint, but the cops never checked on the small private shops. Hazel’s place had, at some point, become a checkpoint on the underground artist radar. Nico didn’t know any others personally, but his graffiti – or Hades’ Prodigy’s – was talked about. Not because it was famous, but because Nico’s style was unique and ragged, you knew you were looking at his pieces when you saw one. Nico recognized his own note on the board, a piece of paper with small letters:

_"57 Westfort avn.  
Parkinglot, inner wall_

_Mine._

_\- H.P."_

There was a green post-it note attached to it now, which was the only form of communication their ‘community’ cared for.

“ _hope u plan on more than fuckin stripes Potter”_

Nico groaned, annoyed. He wished he could change the initials, but he had made a name for himself now. Maybe if he got over his spite for social media, he might communicate to the public that he was not, in fact, an emo Harry Potter fan with too much time on his hands.

Nico headed for the door again and hazel called after him. “See you next Thursday, Harry!”

As Nico struggled to open the door with half a hand, much to Frank Zhang’s amusement, he groaned again. “It’s _not_ Harry Potter, it’s Hades’ Prodigy, Hazel”

Frank Zhang spoke up. “They why don’t you write that instead?” He sounded sincere, but Nico’s mood soured. He mumbled a reply. “Pardon?”

Halfway out the door, shoulders pressed in-between door and doorframe, he snapped back at him: “I can’t write ‘prodigy’ and at this point I’m too scared to look it up.” Then he busted out the door before he could hear a reply, or laugh, or both. Nico wasn’t a fan of confrontation, which was why he worked in the shadows and liked it like that.

-*-

Will sat in his chair, chewing his pen, undistracted from his medical forms as Lou Ellen kept spinning his chair and Kayla’s singing along to her headphone music. He filled in a form and put it on the desk when it span to his right. It was a slow day, but he didn’t dare recognize it as such, didn’t want to jinx it. Kayla had a few patients to check up on and she would nudge Will when it was time for it, but for now, she claimed they were sick of seeing her face. Will giggled. He’d have to tell Kayla later.

Lou Ellen was gaining the chair speed when Austin crashed through the office door, panting.  His eyes landed on Kayla. Lou Ellen stopped spinning. “Where’s Adam Harrison’s corpse?” he demanded breathlessly.

Kayla looked lost. “We just finished her autopsy. She’s in the morgue, why?”

Austin shut his eyes, trying to control his easy temperament. A vain was pumping rapidly on his neck, his straight blonde hair was streaked with stress sweat. It all looked out of place on such a slow day. Carefully, he spoke. “Did you send the forms down to central yet.”

Will carefully picked up a form from the desk. “No, it’s still here, Austin.”

“Thank _god_ ,” Austin breathed. He accepted the papers and ripped them rather aggressively. Will and Kyla protested and Austin yelled at them. “The family didn’t _want_ a fucking autopsy on their trans child, it was all on the chart, Kayla!”

Kayla glared daggers at Will.

Will winched. “It’s not the nurse _intern’s_ job to check for autopsy approvals.” Kayla looked away, bitter. Will went on. “Besides, there’s no reason the family wouldn’t want one for their daughter! She dropped dead; one would want to know why.”

“Son,” Austin said.

“ _Daughter,_ ” Will corrected. “She had high estrogen and hormones off the charts. Just because her legal name was Adam doesn’t mean she-“

Austin interrupted him. “It doesn’t matter, Will, he’s ‘not with us’ anymore or whatever.”

Will put his chart on the desk and sat back in his chair. Lou Ellen shifted nervously behind him. He whispered in disbelief. “Are you seriously disrespecting the dead?”

Austin rolled his eyes. He was done with this argument. “The estrogen levels are the reason they didn’t want an autopsy, Will. They want no medical records of their child’s… what did they call it? Ah, _phase_. Horrible phrasing, but still.” Will was about to say something, but Austin silenced him. “The mother is running for office. She doesn’t need the story of her dead son-daughter to bite her in the ass in the final rounds. And quite frankly, I’m on her side. You know, feminism and all that.” Austin left and hurried away, giving them no time to tell him that’s not how feminism works.

They sat in empty silence. Kayla finally spoke up after a few moments, smacking the back of Will’s head. “You know what _is_ the intern’s job? Alerting me when the office wants to bite my ass.” She dragged Will out of his chair and he staggered after her. “Let’s go destroy evidenceeeee!” she said gleefully down the hall and started skipping to central.

Will hesitantly followed. Getting rid of her official medical records would erase all proof she was transgender, yes, but it was first and foremost illegal to temper with a person’s records. Once it was written, it was the legal truth, both criminally and medically. As he and Kayla looked through the charts for her files while she was still alive down at central, the main storage for their paperwork, he couldn’t help but think that they shouldn’t be doing this. Yes, it was illegal, but someone might want to use her file for justice once.

Kayla was paged to help in a surgery and left Will to keep looking. Not that he did, but it was a cardio surgery so he wouldn’t see Kayla until his next shift anyways. So he spent the rest of the day being the lab’s pawn, giving doctors their test results and ensuring them that _yes, it’s double checked_ even though he had no idea. With 10 minutes left on hour 24 he knocked on the office window where Lou Ellen was on the phone with dead person’s loved ones. Well, he assumed as much, from her easy grin and new pedicure. She looked up at him, puzzled.

Will grinned brilliantly and tapped his watch. Her face paled. He used his last ounce of energy to do his victory/you’re-still-stuck-here dance. As a pencil pusher her hours might be shorter, but even stupid people slept at night. Nothing would happen here until she clocked out in two more hours. When his watch beeped his shift to an end, Lou Ellen waved him off and he started for the locker room.

He had changed out of his nurse scrubs and into light blue jeans and a brown hoodie as he walked down familiar alleys. His steps were soundless with his trainers. A fog sept through the city in all its 4am glory and lonely light posts highlighted the streets. Will turned every corner like usual, scaring away a stray cat and accidentally stepped in puddle with his not-waterproof sneakers. His path led him into the open sidewalk by the park and parking lot just as the water tugged at his sock.

Will halted to a stop. He’d glanced to his right and could see a bright flashlight illuminating the childish bird graffiti from the other day. Something moved, fast and sure. It was a person, a very dark person with hunched shoulders and determined steps, applying more paint to the wall. Will stepped forward and the down steep led him closer in a muted walk.

Will himself thought he stopped at a reasonable distance from the scene. He wasn’t one for creepy spying. “So it’s not a bird?” he asked, eyeing the new, ragged lines.

The artist flipped around and pierced their eyes at Will. “What the FUCK-“ the artist, probably male, started. He pressed his back to the wall. For a moment, he looked smaller, but it passed quickly and he straightened. They eyed each other. He was probably trying to figure out if Will was a danger to him. The stranger wore all black, from dirty, ripped skinny jeans to his loose but fitting leather jacket. His black hoodie was pulled over his head and most of his face was covered with a tube mask with a skeletal human jaw print on it. He was guarded, sceptical, and Will realized he was staring.

“So…uh. Is it?” The stranger said nothing, glare ice cold. Will scratched the back of his head. “You know, not a bird?”

The artist narrowed his eyes at him and glanced back to the wall. “No, it’s not a _bird_. Are you trying to insult it? ‘Cause no one insults a baby the second it’s born and it’s blood everywhere.” Will shook his head ‘no, no, of course not’. The stranger eased up somewhat and he glanced back towards the park. “Good. Now, how the hell did you sneak up on me?” His posture was tense; ready to grab his things and run the second he needed to.

Will perked up. “Have you ever tried wearing hospitals shoes?” He stepped closer. “It’s like wearing concrete under your feet at all times, no matter which room you’re in. These,” he gestured to his sneakers. “are like heaven in comparison.”

The other guy rolled his eyes and Will smiled.

Leaning against the other cement wall, Will said. “You would have thought the hospital would provide better footwear when they make you stand on your feet a full day.”

Picking up a can, he looked Will up and down. His gaze weren’t as cold as before, and Will swore he could be smiling slightly under the face tube. “Are you planning on staying here? ‘Cause it’s not exactly legal.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” Will breathed, looking away.

“And you look like death.”

Will gave him a look. Now he was definitely smiling under that mask, chin raised slightly. “24 hours.” Will checked his watch: 4:21am. He _might_ get 3 hours if he left right away, then he could take a nap in the afternoon.

 _He has dark eyes. Like, pits-of-hell dark_ , Will noticed as said eyes returned to the artwork. “You’re almost nodding off right there and I’m _not_ carrying a stranger home.” The stranger paused. “Not tonight, at least.” He _glanced_ at Will.

Will started to get a sneaky suspicion that he was talking to a hit man. The Possible Hit Man was shorter than he was, but his light leather jacket could hide assassin worthy muscles and Will did not like the odds. He could push heart beat monitors and hold 16 charts at once, but had no fighting skills.

Will pushed off from the wall and started backtracking. “Good luck,” he called back to him. “I hope you don’t get caught, I wanna see the final result!” Then he flashed him a brilliant smile, turned around and headed straight home, rounded the corner and disappeared into the night. He could hear faint steps behind him, and it wasn’t that he was scared, it was just the fact that he had witnessed a crime and the guy was sort of terrifying. Scary in the same way your heart stop when you drop a plate and it shatters by your feet. Instant and quick-passing panic before you realize the world is still in order even though the plate is ruined.

Will slowed his pace, feeling sleep tug at him. He really had to start taking naps in his breaks like everyone suggested. He turned left, left, right and left again before he got to the apartment complex.

“ _Cecil!_ ” Will hissed from the door. His keys jingled as he took off his shoes and threw the bedroom door open.

His roommate wasn’t big on cleaning, and it was fine with Will as long as the trash didn’t leave his room unless it was in a garbage bag. His dirty dishes, a questionable sock and their take-out from two days before littered his desk. Cecil sat by his desk, mouse clicking rapidly with an either expressionless or way past sleep deprived face. 

Cecil had his drapes blocking out the moonlight. But the sky was cloudy, and Cecil had probably not left the apartment since Will left. “Hey man, how long have you been at it?”

Cecil lifted his head shortly, or it was a small nod. “With your mom? Since before your birth, shitface.” His voice was drained and he wasn’t the best conversationalist right before he passes out.

Will sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m older than you and are you going to bed tonight?” Cecil shook his head no, not looking up, and jerked his head towards a newly found interesting part of the screen. Will was about to leave, but paused. “How do you expect me to believe that you bring girls home to this mess?”

Cecil smug grin appeared. “You’re gone for full days, bro. You’re a wreck too, but heaps of textbooks, scribbled notes and highlighters look like a better kinda mess than this dump. No tits have been flashed in _my_ room.”

“You fucker,” Will breathed as he closed the door and headed for the bathroom. No tits had been flashed in _his_ room either, as far as he knew. He eyed the old couch with colourless edges and pasta sauce smudges by his bed. He loved Cecil but because of his ass sweat, Will Solace is never touching that thing again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm only writing this because it doesn't seem like anybody else is going to
> 
> P.S. I have no idea which city they're in. Not a clue. Westfort avenue probably exists, but meh


	3. Beer Caps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico weren't even supposed to work that night and Drew is not the biggest bitch

For the most part, Nico’s life had been bitter. Bitter after his mother, wrecked after his sister, and a sort of out-of-body experience after his father where he just watched himself go about his business. But lately he’d started to think it might turn out for the better.

Then his life had turned bittersweet.

He rushed down the crowded streets with narrow buildings overlooking his every move, cut through the crowd like a butter knife.

**From: McLean, Piper – 8:26pm**

_Hey can you be di angelo you are and cover for me tonight_

He seemed to be rushing everywhere these days. Rushing out of his apartment while still eating his left over Chinese food, rushing away from Hazel’s store with scrambling cans in a box, rushing his sketches to bring to Westfort, rushing at a reasonable distance after a boy with nice hair to make sure he didn’t tell the cops on him.

**Sent to: McLean, Piper – 8:26pm**

_we open the bar in 30 minutes i coulnt make it even if i tried_

The bar was a 45-minute jog from his place, but 30 if you were Nico di Angelo from a year ago. He wasn’t Nico di Angelo from a year ago. He was the next best thing and that, of course, would get him late to work. There was as much traffic and crowds as it usually was at a Friday evening. Still sober people were either walking home from their jobs or walking to a party – some were using Google Maps. Nico ignored them all and put his quick reflexes to use as he dodged every elbow, street corner, homeless man, and missionary in his way.

He prayed to whatever god was listening that they had clean uniforms in the break room, because even though all his shirts were black they weren’t ‘the _right_ black and went _terribly_ with his surprisingly fashionable jeans’ according to Drew Tanaka. He wasn’t a fan of hers, but at the same time, where would the business be if it weren’t for her? She knew how to sell and Nico – by all means – didn’t. It was mutual respect.

The bar _Sidetracked_ was a small place, and didn’t look like much; neatly hidden in a fairly lit alley by the main street, a small sign with a spot light to it and a guard by the entrance. He checked his phone: 09:08pm. _Shit_. He didn’t have time to take the back entrance and _Connor fucking Stoll_ of all people was on guard duty tonight.

Nico passed him with a nod, but Connor stepped in front of him as he reached for the door. “ID?”

Nico glared at him. They’d known each other since high school and the Stoll brother was just doing this for kicks. His daring smile made it even more prominent. “Let me in, I’m working tonight. Piper’s sick,” he lied.

**From: McLean, Piper – 8:28pm**

         _You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important_

Drew shoved the door open and gave Connor a fit for holding up Nico when she ‘needed some goddamn _help_ for _once_ ’. Nico snuck past and headed straight for the abandoned bar, snaking his way past round tables and table stools. He climbed over the counter, threw his jacket in a corner and started his checking if everything was ready. The glasses weren’t in place, the floor was littered with popcorn and bottle caps and _other_ , some drink mixes were missing, and the chair in the back had to be taped again to stop spilling the stuffing. Drew had prioritized getting the cash register to cooperate, a pain to deal with every night, and Nico was grateful. Every chore could be done from behind the counter, which meant they could do it while taking orders and that was always easiest.

 _Well. Drew could do it from behind the counter_. Nico usually does what he consider is important at work, which is nothing. Annabeth, his partner, was nice about it. She liked handling things herself and having everything in order, and she counted on him to step in when she needed it. Nico liked taping doodles to cabinets shielded from costumers’ view and eating staff-only popcorn from his chair.

Drew wouldn’t have it, though, and he should have known. She ordered him around like a goddess’s slave in her honey voice – sweet but a serious reminder of Nico’s bee allergy. Nico only listened half the time; he was too busy trying to tape his chair back together _again_ in between the chores.

 _Sidetracked_ had a steady stream of people coming and going into the night when Nico was carrying a tray of steamy glasses and Connor leaned over the sticky bar counter. “Nico, I’m giving that woozy woman by the window a red card.” Then he pushed away from the bar.

“ _What?”_ Nico hissed. Connor stopped. “Stoll, you don’t give people red cards for fucking ‘ _woosiness’_ , only if they can’t walk straight!”

Connor shrugged, reached into his pocket, slapped a crimson card on the counter and left. His back shook slightly with chuckles.

Nico’s ears were burning as he stuffed the card into his back pocket. His hands worked flimsily as he dried the counter and handled the cash register. Drew had fetched him the right kind of black shirt when they hit the midnight mark.

The night got busier as a party of twelve merely drunk people occupied four tables and kept ordering tequila shots from Drew. This left Nico to basically everything else and he was not okay. He was not a people person.

He had just returned to the register after fixing an order of beer jugs and was tapping the screen in front of him. “What can I get you?” he asked absentmindedly, finding the beverage section in the program.

The person faltered. “Um…” Nico looked up, but they weren’t looking at him. His breath hitched.

_Well. Shit._

He could swear someone was in charge of his life and hated the job. Sun kissed blonde hair stood before him once again in a sky blue T-shirt and a jacket that made Nico weak. The intruder wasn’t looking at him; he was intensely focused on the calk menu behind him. Nico’s fingers tingled. Then eyes to match the shirt landed on him.

Nico steeled himself. As chaos erupted in his head, he tried to check the facts. He’d been covered from head to toe yesterday, there was no _way_ he’d be recognized. Although, right now he wore only a t-shirt and jeans and held himself more frontal than before. There was still a chance. They stared at each other in baffled silence. He didn’t think.

Nico grabbed Drew’s elbow as she was about to head out with another round of tequilas. She complained, but looked at him over her shoulder. “I _need_ you to take this one.” He held her eyes. She nodded reluctantly and Nico disappeared to the back with long steps.

He stood in the break room with four white walls and a couch, trying to breathe evenly. Could he run? No, it was already a mess out there, Connor knew nothing of drinks and people were slowly drinking themselves to unconsciousness. He ran his hands over his face and through his hair. There was a good chance there was nothing to worry about, but if he got caught there would be an unimaginable huge mess – even for him. If this was Italy, it would be no problem, but situations in U.S. were different. In the abandoned streets he was nobody, but in this bar he had a face and a name and this stranger would get to know his name. He didn’t know he was about to cry until the door opened and Drew stepped in. Nico couldn’t regain his posture to save his life.

She quickly followed and dragged him to the staff restroom. “I got the bar handled right now, but you can’t leave, so _I need you_ to step in here and hold a damp _something_ to your eyes and try to breathe evenly.” She pushed him into the small restroom as if she pushed clothes aside on a rack. “If you don’t come back in three minutes, I’m checking on you.” He didn’t reply and she didn’t wait for it.

Nico guessed that was their thing; only doing things when the other really needed them to.

The debt he’s in to Drew Tanaka is enough to pay off his student loans. He did as he was told and stepped out feeling more refreshed. He has to stop thinking the worst possible outcome. He was going to get Drew to handle the table with The Intruder™ so he would handle everything else by the bar. Nothing needed to be exposed. Nothing had to change.

But the fates loved him. Or hated him. He couldn’t decide.

 _He_ was sitting by the counter, at the corner, laughing with a friend. Each had a beer and looked like they were engrossed in a discussion about something both interesting and disgusting. The bar counter was a small because the bar itself was built to hold maybe 80 people. Nico cursed. He might not be a people person, but he was definitely not a service person, and having him serving would be a worse sales idea than Travis Stoll’s light purple beer. How did he even get this job? How did he _hold_ this job?

So Nico stayed put behind the barriers of socializing, filling up his and Drew’s orders and tried very hard no to un-accidentally glare at the source of all his current problems.

He failed, of course. The intruder with the nice face and clean shirt got caught squinting at Nico several times, as if it was a thick fog between them. His friend called for another round of beers and Nico obliged. He also brought a rag for Drew to clean up a mess.

“Oh, wait, can I have that, please?” the source of all his current problems said as Nico was about to throw out the caps. He went over and placed them on the counter without a word. “Oh, I just need one of them.” Nico groaned internally, still not facing him, but the guy from yesterday was smiling apologetic and sincere at him. “But- but I can take both if it’s too much trouble!” He was a squirming mess.

Nico turned, looking right at him for the first time in the past two hours. His friend was taken aback, but otherwise looked like he had the time of his life watching the intruder fumble a one-way conversation. Nico placed a finger on one of the caps. “It’s fine. It’s not like we recycle here.” He pushed the cap across the counter, picked up the other and threw it in the trash. The other guy seemed flustered.

_This idiot keeps ruining my plans not to talk to him._

Looking back at it, he think he got a warning. Something along the lines of “ _NICO, heads UP_ -“ before a very wet, very mouldy rag slap hugged his head.

“What the FUCK-“ he demanded, ripping it off. Nico scanned the crowd for Drew and found her waving a hand like ‘ _not sorry, get over it_ ’. Then he realized his mistake and he spun around, much like he had in the parking lot, to face the intruder. Nico cursed himself and felt the blood drain from his face.

The other guy was no longer squirming. He stared at Nico as if he had just put on his glasses and the fog was gone. The realization hit like a train wreck. Nico staggered back a step as the intruder opened his mouth. “You…” He blinked a few times. “…yeah. I’m not wrong.” He said it like a question but also as a statement. Nico was grateful he didn’t actually say it out loud.

“What, Will?” his friend asked. He fixed his eyes on Nico and squinted in a manner Connor would call _woozy_. “Have you sliced him up?”

Nico ears burned again. The intruder – _Will –_ shook his head in panic. “No! I’ve never sliced anyone open, Cecil.”

“What I’m hearing is that you don’t think of dead people as people.”

Will groaned in defeat and Nico felt a smile tug at his lips. Will glanced at his bartender. “I’m sorry. He’s just extremely light weight.”

Nico shrugged and picked up a tray. “Enough that I have to throw him out?”

“Oh no,” Will said, eyeing his friend. “You’ll know when.”

Nico nodded and went back to the register. Just like that he’d had a conversation with the one person he was going to avoid tonight. Connor appeared behind him from the back and whispered; “I think we need to get a cab for Mr D in the corner tonight.”

Who stood by the door if Connor was here? Nico looked up. “Stoll, you can’t fucking switch with Drew – this isn’t collage majors. And you got little to no knowledge of drinks except how to drink them.”

“Just for five minutes, Nico, I really need to take a piss.” With that, he slipped into the back again. Nico grumbled something about using his name and ‘piss’ in the same sentence as he dialled the taxi service. Mr D was a regular costumer and a life-ignoring alcoholic. Nico respected him as well. He went over to the corner by Will and Cecil as it seemed to be the quietest area. He quickly explained the details to the taxi service and hung up. Mr D seemed to be napping by his table. He could feel Will watching him. Nico signalled Drew and jumped over the counter, hearing Cecil yelp. They were closing beverage sales now anyway so he stalked over to the door as Drew went to wake up their costumer. She was better with people – if the human incarnation of boxed wine counted as a person.

They were edging closer to 3am, their closing mark, and was sweeping the floor to hint that _hey get your butts out_. Will and Friend was lingering by the bar still. Drew walked up to Nico, broom in hand. “You can leave now; you weren’t even ‘sposed to be here. Thanks.” She smiled a little at him. “Go, fetch your jacket and leave with the herd. We got it covered here.” She picked up a remote and _“So What”_ by P!nk blasted from the stereos. Nico smiled fondly at the sight of Connor Stoll and Drew Tanaka sweeping furiously and mumbling the lyrics. He retrieved his jacket and rounded up the remaining people. The tiled floor was sticky in some places as he guided the confused herd outside and into the October cold.

“Gotta stop thinking of drunks as confused cows,” he told Will as he slipped on his jacket. Cecil was circling a Benz waiting by the entrance, enchanted by the car. Nico frowned. “Or maybe not.”

Will chuckled. He had a laugh that shook his entire body, as if he couldn’t _contain_ the joy.

“I, eh…” Nico started. “I don’t have to tell you not to… call the police?”

Will seemed buzzed and puzzled, living up the cow image. “Oh, you mean the parking lot?” Nico nodded. “No, no, of course not. I meant what I said.” Will smiled genuinely – _honestly._

 _I hope you don’t get caught_ , echoed in his mind. _I wanna see the final result!_

It had been stupid at the time, because he was never going to see Will’s reaction anyway, but in this moment, it didn’t seem so impossible after all. Nico ducked his head and hid his small smile. “Thanks.”

It was a loud bang inside the bar and through the windows, they could see Connor shouting the lyrics into his broom and Drew frowning at him for knocking over a stool. Then Connor turned up the music and Drew begrudgingly started singing again. It was an odd sight.

Nico turned and took off, but Will called after him. “It was nice meeting you again! ...Nico.” He kept on walking away from them.

Cecil’s drunken voice cut through the night, muffled by something, maybe his scarf. “Nico!” he nearly shrieked. “Could you give the hot bartender my number?”

 _If this is the worst outcome of Will knowing my name, then I can live with it._ Nico didn’t turn as his sly grin crept onto his face. “Sorry, I don’t date straight guys.” He did a sort-of wave as he rounded the corner and was out of sight. He felt light – a rare feeling for Nico di Angelo; the bearer of the world’s sorrows. His mind was unusually clear, still feeling on the high of the night. This time, he didn’t rush anywhere.

 

-*-

He had a missed call from Leo, and it took him a while before he picked up. “Hi Nico.”

“Jason,” Nico breathed. He checked the time. “It’s late. Why aren’t you with Piper?” Nico had a bad habit of rolling his eyes when he talked about Jason and Piper as a couple.

“She, uh… won’t see me right now, so Leo let me crash at your place. That alright with you?” Jason sounded groggy, which meant he had been sleeping, which then again meant he was sleeping in the same room as Leo since he had picked up.

“Which place are you crashing in?”

“Seven.”

 _Bless Leo Valdez_. “It’s fine,” Nico said. It was less messy in 7, but the matrass-wannabe-bed was the best bed out of the two, and Leo had saved it for him. Probably a peace offering for letting Jason sleep over without consulting Nico first, even though he tried. “I won’t wake you when I get there, Jay. Drew says hi.”

“Sweet,” Jason mumbled and Nico hung up.

It would be an interesting morning. He prayed Leo had thought of Nico’s cans and hid the stray ones before Jason saw them. 30 minutes later, he was unlocking his apartment door and sliding in with minimum noise. He laid on his matrass but couldn’t sleep; still high on the night’s turn of events. It was a giddy feeling he couldn’t remember feeling for months. He didn’t want to wake up tomorrow and feel the out-of-body lifelong experience again.

Nico got up and grabbed a canvas, going to do what he did best; avoiding his problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they had like 4 lines of conversation haha im trash
> 
> Also, Drew was in this the whole time but only had like 3 direct lines of dialogue, what is writing
> 
> you know, I'm an artist, I draw Solangelo stuff and I can't help but feel like, hey, I should be DRAWING this instead of writing it. but who has time for that. Well, me apparently, since I'm up until 4am writing this shit


	4. The Sketch, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico was having a good day until he didn't

“So.” Cecil pursed his lips. “Are we gonna talk about yesterday, or what?” They stood in the kitchen, which was also the living room/Will’s bedroom, only half a wall separating it from the rest. Cecil was drowning painkillers with coffee.

“There’s nothing to mention,” Will said, sitting on the kitchen counter with a slice of bread in hand.

Cecil gave him a look. “ _Yes_ , it is. You wouldn’t talk about it on the way home, so we’re talking about it now. Who’s ‘Nico’?”

Will shrugged. “You were there, he was your bartender too.”

Cecil narrowed his eyes at Will and stepped closer. “ _Who_ is Nico, Will? Fucking tell me, you’ve been acting weird.”

He couldn’t deny that. Will had been spacing out ever since he walked into _Sidetracked_ yesterday. He’d seen Nico and even spaced out right in front of him, staring at the menu board, trying to figure out why the bangs and eyes looked familiar. But god, did he looked different in just one layer of clothing. Most of his hair had been up in a small ponytail and Will had seen why. Nico had moved fast and sure like a well oiled machine behind the counter, taking orders and cleaning in a sure rhythm. He’d been moving constantly as new people had poured into the bar, and by the time he’d actually talked to Will, he was sweating. Strands of hair stuck to his forehead and Will had not been staring. Will had also promised not to rat him out to the cops and of course he wasn’t going to. Not until he got his hit man suspicions proved. Although, Nico didn’t seem like a killer after yesterday; he was a person who blushed at the thought of sliced skin, tried not to smile at pleasant things and didn’t date straight guys.

Will shook his head and pretended to give in. “I’ve met him before. Once. In the hospital. We chatted as he was discharged after an infection.”

Cecil put a finger to his chin. “No wonder he was pissed. You didn’t remember him right away.”

He didn’t know if Nico had been pissed or if it was just his natural resting face. Maybe both. Maybe he was constantly angry. “Hundreds of people come in every day, it’s impossible to remember every one of them!” Will defended himself, crossing his arms.

“I’m just saying. You usually don’t ogle at guys for _hours_.” Cecil winked at him with a lopsided grin.

Will groaned. “I did _not_.”

“Fine, live a lie,” he said and downed the remains of his coffee.

 

-*-

Nico ripped himself from his current artwork. It was right before noon and he looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. He’d run out of canvases at some point and started on his colouring book with huge textured papers. Paintings were spread across the floor, along with brushes, acrylic paint, paper towels bleeding lilac and moss green, and colour stained jars filled with grey-green water.

Nico stood in the middle of the clutter. His soul had melted from his own body, seeped from his feet and attached itself onto every surface he could see. He watched it all with wide eyes. He saw colours he had spited before looking magnificent with others, in those shapes, shaded like _that_ and highlighted like _that_. He saw furious strokes and cautious lines and it fit together over _there_ , he saw colours like honey and lapis seeping through all around him and he could _breathe._

It was euphoria to feel so grounded and solid in his body. Also, if this was his soul, then it was surprisingly less dark than he’d thought. His back ached after hovering over the floor all night, almost in trance. Nico carefully stepped on the small places of exposed wood to get out of the apartment. He knew 6 didn’t have any food. Running a hand through his tangled hair, he opened 7’s door across the hallway.

Spread across a sprinkle, king sized bed with an actual headboard, were two boys with limbs in heaps. Half of Jason’s body hang over the side of the bed, and Leo’s messy hair was buried in Jason’s side – both sound asleep. Nico didn’t like it.

He slammed the door behind him for dramatic effect. “Leo Valdez, you man-whore.”

Leo shot up, eyes unfocused and body functioning two seconds later than his brain. His eyes found Nico. “Nico!” Leo pushed the other half of a still sleeping Jason off the bed. “I can explain,” Leo started, voice still dripping with sleep.

From the floor, Jason whined.

Leo tended to hallucinate the first and last few minutes he was awake. “It’s not what it looks like!” he pleaded. Leo might actually think he was cheating on his roommate.

“I don’t want to hear it, Valdez,” Nico dismissed and retrieved a capri-sun from the fridge. He went over to where Jason was lying and feeling for his glasses, and joined him on the floor. Leo was pressing his head into his pillow and it sounded like he was sobbing. Nico ignored him. He would remember in a few minutes. “So,” he said, poking Jason’s leg. “What’s going on with Piper?”

Jason gave a small cheer as he finally obtained his glasses and sat up. He didn’t look hurt, but at the same time, Jason was a master of hiding any kind of emotion. Nico would know. “I don’t know. I want to know,” Jason said. He rubbed his face. “I _should_ know.”

Nico made a face. “You _should_? Jay, you don’t dictate her life. If she needed you, she would have called.”

Jason raised his eyebrows at him. The message was clear; _you didn’t_.

Nico glared at him. “She’s entitled to some space without having to explain herself.”

“Then she should tell me that, instead of barricading herself inside her house.” Leo had joined the conversation by now, glowering at Nico for playing with his easily affected mind. Jason held his posture. “She refuses to see anyone and even had you take her shift!”

Nico was always ready to defend Piper. It was yet another thing he just _did_ without an explanation – doodling on his hand with every pen he finds; feeling every concrete building he walked alongside of; avoiding paprika in all his take out food; unnecessarily double tapping the beer beverage on the register; holding that one coin in his jacket pocket; defending Piper.

“She asked me half an hour before we opened; Jason, I don’t think she _planned_ this.”

Jason sighed heavy and long. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “You always are.” He felt some of the tension lift. Nico held up his empty capri-sun to Leo. A Question. Leo shrugged. Nico got up and found three more.

“Are you gonna see her?” Leo asked their small circle, sucking on his capri-sun.

When Jason didn’t answer, Nico said: “Yeah. I’m gonna try and fill her in on what happened at work."

“Something happened?” Jason perked up, concerned. Nico felt like he was being kicked.

He grimaced. “Drew saw something and I think Piper should hear about it from me first.” Nico waited for a response. They waited for an explanation. Stabbing his second capri-sun, Nico said: “She saw me…cry.” Leo and Jason started to stir. Nico dismissed them with a wave. “Nothing happened! It just, well, _happened_.” Nico’s annoyance seeped into his words. He didn’t want their pity or concern. He wanted to erase it all. He wanted to neatly wrap the whole thing up and throw it into the deep unknown of the ocean. It’s not like Nico doesn’t cry, it’s just that he did it in the confidence that no one would interrupt him, he could self-loath alone for hours, and he preferred it to be under covers.

Leo scratched Nico’s arm. “Does it have anything to do with your paint covered, uh, everything?”

Nico examined his arms and shirt. He had spots of colours everywhere, a giant spotted blob of yellow-green-blue by the hem of his _Sidetracked_ shirt, as if he’d laid down on a wet canvas – which he probably had. His right elbow was covered in lapis and grey.

“No, I stayed up painting. Didn’t wanna sleep,” Nico mumbled as he tried to peel off some black from his fingers.

“YOU DIDN’T –” Leo stopped himself. He was rubbing the sides of his head with his index. “You didn’t use the bed- I left you 6 and you didn’t use the bed, _pinche perfecto_.” Leo glared at him, but it was just as effective as a house cat. “I had to sleep with _this_ monstrosity.” Leo gestured to Jason. “Do you know how much he snores?”

“I do know.”

“And you didn’t use the bed.” Leo spelled out every word, like he didn’t believe it himself. “I was a saint to leave it for you –“

Nico groaned. “Gee, _grazie_ , Valdez. I really feel like thanking you right now.”

“You didn’t sleep because of your depression?” This was Jason. One usually looks at Jason and thinks he’s going to save the day with his clever face and carefully planned gestures, but more often than not he tended to ruin it. That was only Nico’s opinion, of course.

The euphoria drained from him. Nico sent him a mocking smile. “If anything, I should sleep more, right? Isolate myself? Not eating for 3.4 days on average?”

Nico was right in calling him out on it, and Jason knew it. Jason held his hands up in surrender. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

Nico rolled his eyes.

Leo laid down on the bed, eating a questionable cracker. “Should be your catchphrase.”

 

-*-

“I can’t believe we’re related,” Will said under his breath.

Austin turned. “What was that, Solace?”

Will just shook his head, reading a chart. Austin and he were standing by central, killing time by pretending they liked each other while they waited for their father to meet them. It was a busy day; most of the nurses were scrubbed in, overlooking surgeries or occupied with conscious patients. Will wasn’t allowed to have patients of his own, but it didn’t stop him from hoping. Austin just enjoyed picking fights.

Will’s shift had started at a reasonable hour this time, so it would end at a reasonable time as well. Why wasn’t he happy about that? He would be home by nine and get a full night’s sleep for once. This wasn’t his usual hours, although they needed him at all times. Will just liked to avoid his father’s gaze when he could, and gladly took the ungodly shifts no one else wanted.

The hospital buzzed around them, every hand busy. Austin cleared his throat. “Should’ve seen this woman that came in two hours ago, huge glass shard straight through her spine.” Austin’s eyes glinted.

“You aren’t even in medical.”

Austin snorted. “Not everybody wanna chase dad in the field. Advantage or not.”

Will’s mouth slipped. “ _I claimed the title effortless and undefeated, but it’s not glory._ ” It was one of Will’s favourite quotes, from a time when his mother still made him pancakes every Friday.

His half-brother thought every child of Apollo took a medical degree to impress their father – not really considering that they all might want to help the sick and were being _inspired_ by their father instead.

“At least you got dad’s voice,” Will mumbled, toying with the chart in his hands.

Apollo spotted them from down the hall and came running up. _No running unless you’re helping the paramedics_ , Apollo’s voice echoed in Will’s head from his tour of the hospital a year ago. His father had a lot of kids with a lot of women, and many of them started working here when they came of age – Will was no exception. His holidays as a child reminded him of the movies about a woman who discovered her boyfriend spent the weekends with his family a few towns over and _she_ was the mistress, not his wife.

“How’s my two best boys?” Apollo said, patting their shoulders.

“Say it louder, I don’t think Michael heard you,” Austin snickered.

Will was at the loss of words. His gut twisted and he had to steady himself on the desk behind him not to smack Austin across his stupid face. “Once again with the disrespecting the dead…” was all Will could manage.

“They’re _dead_ , Solace,” Austin clarified, as if Will needed a reminder. “What can they do about it? Someday all this compassion will be the end of you, I swear it.”

Apollo coughed and they turned to him. “That’s enough, Austin. Will, I just need you to fill out something in the office later.” Apollo’s eyes glinted the same way Austin’s did.

Living with Cecil, he’d learned to be suspicious of people, and also adopted quite a lot of squinting. “What kind of something?”

Apollo shuffled his feet. “Just, you know… work stuff. Nurse stuff. Non-intern-actual-nurse stuff.”

Will furrowed his brows at him, but didn’t get the chance to say anything as two boys ran up to them from the main gate. One was clutching his hand while being dragged along with the other.

The dragger, a blond Caucasian guy, presented the Latino holding his hand as if he was testifying for court. “He broke his hand. Please fix him.”

The Latino gave his friend the stink eye. “I’m not fucking broken, Jason. I just slipped. I don’t need to be here.”

“Sounds just like someone else we know,” Jason stated, crossing his arms.

Apollo took a quick look at hand and shrugged. “He’s right though; it’s not broken. You might want to hang around a little while Will here,” Apollo patted his respected son’s back. “’will’ take a look at it.” He chuckled at his own horrible joke.

Will was just happy to excuse himself from both Austin and his father. “Come with me, please,” he said and guided them towards the visiting area. He had a feeling it was going to be a long day.

 

-*-

Piper refused to open the door, much like she had with Jason. Nico hadn’t expected it to be different with him, but a small part of him had hoped Jason was the problem. It would be easier to deal with. Piper lived in an apartment, but it’s much less of an apartment and more like an entire top floor of an apartment building. She lived in a penthouse she’d designed and built herself after she started making some extra money. A penthouse she had barricaded herself in. Nico _knew_ he had told Jason to give her space, and he should follow his own advice, but this was so very unlike Piper he couldn’t ignore it. He knocked again. There was no sound from the other side, but Nico wouldn’t be surprised if Piper had soundproofed the apartment.

After a moment, he sat down, picking on his black combat shoes. “He didn’t send me. Jason.” Nico spoke evenly, just having a normal conversation with a door. He took a deep breath. “I cried yesterday at work, don’t ask why, but I did and Drew saw.” He waited for a response. When he didn’t get one he continued. “Jason thinks it’s the depression stuff. He takes one class of _Introduction to Psychology_ in high school and thinks he can walk around diagnosing people.” Nico rolled his eyes. “It’s not. I was just… scared. For a minute. And Drew happened to see it, but she helped me get it together – can you tell her thanks for me? I think I forgot – and generally being a good person most of the shift. I just saw someone and couldn’t handle it right then and there and…” Nico felt his voice fade.

A chuckle came from the other side of the door. “Who gets Nico di Angelo so riled up he starts cryin’? I need to meet this person and pay my respects.”

Nico’s spirited lifted and he smiled at the door. “The murder witness, Piper. He needs to be taken _care_ of.”

A bubble of giggles came from the door and Nico’s smile grew. As it quieted, Nico heard Piper sigh. “Jason didn’t do anything, if that’s what he’s thinking. I got a life outside of him, you know.”

“That’s what I told him,” Nico agreed.

“This is just…” There was a pause. “It’s not for him to worry about, I…”

He waited. Nico knew everything about having overwhelming emotions. After a minute, he said “You…?”

It was an almost embarrassed silence. “I cut off my hair. A huge chunk of it.”

_Fuck._ Piper only did that in times of distress, but she’d told Nico it had been years since she quit the rebellious hair cutting. She’d used to do it when she was frustrated with her father and didn’t have words to describe what she felt. Piper sounded almost ashamed, but not for her hair – but the fact that she’d fallen back so many years.

“I don’t –,” Piper whispered, voice strained. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Nico nodded. “I just nodded,” he told the door. “How’s your show? The videos?” That was a safe subject, probably. He would have left, but Piper was actually talking to him, which was an improvement.

Piper sighed, heavy and tired. “It’s fine. It won’t be anything up this week, of course.”

Nico shrugged. “You could do a recap,” he proposed. “And I just shrugged.”

“I’m shaking my head,” she said. “I did one a few weeks ago when I had the flu, remember?”

“No, it was during my ‘seasonal depression’ as Jason called it.” Nico rolled his eyes.

“You’re rolling your eyes, I know it.” Piper’s voice was lighter, not as burdened. “He worries about you sometimes – that’s just what he does.”

Nico glared at the door. “He’s worried about you _now_. I think he’ll save a lot of energy if he didn’t worry so much.”

“Ah,” Piper said. “But isn’t that why we love him?”

“Yeah,” Nico breathed. Jason’s constant worrying was short-sightedly a good trait, but he sometimes let it succumb him. He’d devote everything to making that person feel better. He just didn’t see that sometimes there was nothing he could do. “I guess.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this notebook I've named "graffiti AU headcanons" that I've been writing in since October, but I just realized it's not headcanons when I can literally make it happen.  
> I shouldn't have this much power. 
> 
> I've already written part 2 and it will be up ASAP  
> Thank you all for the great feedback!~ If anything is weird or if you have any questions, feel free to ask, and if you liked it I'd be happy to hear about that too. Happy New Years everyone!!


	5. The Sketch, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico is so tired he could kill someone, and Leo almost does. Will tries to help

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never half-ass anything. I envy those who can write one-shots with only solangelo debt and don't need to create an entire universe for a fic. It's occurring to me that this will be a slow burn, because I had imagined by chapter 5 that goddamn wall would be done so we could move on in the plot but I guess not

Will was checking for splints when Jason came up to him. He had a walk like he grew up privileged, straight back and long steps, as if nothing in the world wanted to hurt him. As if he’d never been taught to bow his head to anyone.

“Is he going to be alright?” Jason asked him. His glasses were slightly askew.

Will walked with him back to Leo Valdez, splint in hand. “He just sprained his wrist – it’s nothing major. Do you know how to do a splint? He’ll need it changed tomorrow.” Will eyed his patient chatting with an old woman a few seats away from him, forgetting to hold his hand still and gesturing wildly. “I don’t think he’ll manage it on his own.”

Jason shook his head. “Not me, but his roommate knows. Which reminds me – I got to call him and tell him the story.” Jason patted his jeans for his phone. “You wanna listen in, doc? It was awesome.”

Will nodded absentmindedly as he sat down next to Leo Valdez and took his hand. He tried to remember the details of how to do a splint from his course.

Leo looked up in misery. “I’m not left-handed, thank god, but will I be able to use it any time soon? I got a huge thing coming up and I can’t engineer it the fuck up with just one hand.”

“Well, thing is,” Will said, looking up at him. “You _can_ use it right now. Whatever pain you feel after this long is just you reliving it in your head. But you’ve got to be careful when you use it in the next few weeks.” Will splintered his hand while he talked. “It’s easy to sprain it again if it’s not fully healed.”

Jason light up, standing next to them, phone to his ear. “Yeah, Nico?”

 

-*-

“Hey, Jason,” Nico said, heading down the street from Piper’s place. She didn’t let him in and he wasn’t mad about it. He’d told her what he came for and even had some intel to Jason as well. “You with Leo? I thought he’d make you stay in the hardware store for hours.”

“We’re at the hospital,” Jason said. Nico’s spine went cold. Worst case senarios of all kinds clouded his head. Then Jason continued: “Leo’s wrist is jacked.”

Nico groaned and cursed Jason out for scaring him like that. “Fucking _idiot_ , why are you at the _hospital_ for a wrist check?! I thought you died, Jason! Or even worse, _Leo died_ , I can’t afford my own place if I gotta pay for my own food! Which poor soul has to deal with you dumbasses, I swear to fucking god. How do you even sprain a wrist at a _hardware store_ , Jason Grace?! _Lead_ with saying ‘hey, Leo’s wrist hurt so we went to the hospital’, not the other way around, jackass.” Nico heaved for a breath and rubbed his forehead. These idiots will be the end of him.

“I know, sorry, but I promise you – the story is worth it.” Jason sounded giddily.

Nico rolled his eyes. He would pay good money for someone to make that the expression he wore in the grave. “Fine, tell me.”

Jason chuckled. “Okay, imagine the shop, ‘kay?” Nico did. “We were standing by the screw section, because Leo’s thing needs it. I was checking out a nice two-inch star one when Leo tries to talk to one of the employees. A girl.” Nico felt a knowing smile tug at his lips. “She ignores him –“

“ _Very rudely, Nico! But she was so pretty I let it go as the gentlem–_ “

“Anyway,” Jason cut Leo off. “Sit still so the doctor can fix you, man. So, the girl employee ignores him and walks away. Leo, dense as he is, starts chasing after her. She avoids the slippery part of the alley – which had a _sign, Leo_ – while he, well, doesn’t. He runs past the sign and slips like Bambi on ice, dragging the girl down _with_ him and had the fucking nerve while his hand is twisted weirdly and her nose is bleeding, to _ask her out_. On the floor. There’s blood.” Someone was laughing in the background and said ‘ _dude you got it bad’_. That couldn’t possibly be the doctor. Jason kept chuckling through the end of the story. “At this point I was apologizing to the store manager, but I think she kneed him in the gut.”

There was some fumbling with the phone and a _Stop it, te verga_ before Leo’s voice came through more clearly than before. “Nico, she _might_ have kneed me, and she might not – it doesn’t matter, point is I’m going back for my parts and to ask her out again and I need you there.”

Nico snorted and the breath came out misty. He zipped up his leather jacket. “I refuse.”

Leo whined on the other end. “ _Please_ – oh, and you gotta splint me up tomorrow, the doc says hi – Nico, my bro, _mi amor_ , the ying to my yang, the love of my life, my soul-bro –“

“No.”

Leo said to Jason. “Jason! The love of my life, my eternal bromance –“

“ _No._ ”

Nico hung up. Leo was all right and anything important could be taken up at home. He had a couple of hours before his shift started at _Sidetracked_. Nico vaguely remembered he hadn’t slept, but it felt like he was walking in daze now anyway, so he might as well power through his shift as well. Lack of sleep wasn’t new to him, but he usually managed to get enough sleep through out one week. This would be his second 48-hour pull this week, but he could do it. It’s not like he could fall asleep now, with just two-three hours until work. He wouldn’t wake up.

Nico rubbed his eyes and texted Leo pick up some dinner, bad hand or not.

 

-*-

He could feel Cecil’s eyes on him. He was a hawk scouting for dinner, looking for the weak spot. They were hunched over their spaghetti, sitting with leg up in the couch and leaning the backs against the armrest. Lou Ellen was slouching on Will’s bed, her finished bowl of spaghetti next to her. Will didn’t meet Cecil’s eyes. He was still going over the conversation with his father, picking through it and tried to twist it into something that made sense, but nothing worked.

Cecil was squinting at him. “Are you sure… you’re not gonna sleep?”

Will barely shook his head. “He wants me to stay there, that’s the only explanation.”

“Well, that’s good,” Lou Ellen said. She used the same voice the used when telling relatives the patient is stabilized but won’t wake up.

“Not necessarily,” Will sighed and rubbed his face with his free hand. “It _means_ he doesn’t see me going anywhere else. Or that he doesn’t believe I can do better, or maybe even that I don’t have a shot at war-medic.” Will’s head hurt with overthinking and dehydration. He tended to forget to drink at the hospital.

“Oh _god_ , don’t let your co-workers hear you say _that_.” Lou Ellen chuckled and tossed her multi-coloured hair. “Aren’t nurses super sensitive about being as useful as surgeons?”

“They’re cuter,” Cecil added, eating a forkful of his spaghetti.

Will had yet to touch his. “Thanks.” Cecil gave him a look. “It’s not that I don’t like nursing – I’m good at it – but I never saw myself end up a nurse for the rest of my life?” Will played with his cold spaghetti. “Not that signing the contract is a life-sentence, of course, but it would be like throwing in the towel, don’t you think?” He looked at his friends; the only people in the world whose opinion mattered to him.

Lou Ellen cleared her throat. “I think…that it shouldn’t matter what we think.”

Cecil nodded, his dirty blonde hair falling into his eyes. “You’re great at what you do right _now_ , and I also think you could be great at something else _later_.”

Will considered this. “Dad wanting me to sign into the hospital…he thinks I’m ready to be a nurse. But I’ve learned what I can from nursing and it’s…” Will stammered. He tried to focus his thoughts, but it just got cloudier. “It’s not enough,” he said finally. His brain was fried and he felt like sleeping for a year. Saying it out loud made it real, it made it the truth he chose to believe and that was all that mattered.

Cecil patted his leg, as it was the only body part of Will’s that he could reach. “Then you know what you gotta do, man.” He smiled lopsidedly at Will.

Will half sighed, half groaned. “We’re gonna be so poor. We’re gonna live off of Lou’s pies and take literal cold showers to save on the electric.”

“I’m _not_ baking pies for your every meal, guys. You’re just gonna have to take up a bigger loan, Will.” Lou Ellen was having none of their shit.

“Maybe next year,” Will said. “I’ll start saving now and when September comes around, I’ll start up collage again.”

Cecil looked around him. “I guess I’m glad you kept all your books?”

“A year from now…” Will mused. Where would he be by then? What kind of person would he be? Many things happened in a hospital in a year, but he wasn’t planning on making his work his entire life the next eleven months. He wasn’t planning on wasting the next year doing the same things he’d already done. He was going to figure out what that pricking sensation in his head was – and he was going to follow it through.

 

-*-

“You look like shit.” Annabeth Chase, ever the straight forward one. At least with Nico anyway – it had taken Percy years to interpret her hinting. She was waiting for the dishwasher to finish up and Nico was slowly eating his staff-only popcorn, every movement looking like he had restraining stretchers attached to him. It was Saturday evening, day two of the sleepless misery, and the bar was relatively full. Nico felt like passing out. Clarisse was on guard duty today, and tonight, it was the guards’ turn to play the crappy music they were convinced everyone loved.

“Yeah,” Nico said through his popcorn.

“Like you’ve died and someone’s possessing you.” Annabeth was eyeing him. He was still wearing his paint stained _Sidetracked_ shirt. He hadn’t brushed his teeth or taken a shower, and he definitely hadn’t brushed his hair. He might still have some paint on his chin.

“Yeah.” He would argue, but that meant denying the truth and Nico didn’t do that. He often ignored it, but couldn’t fight the crushing knowledge of honesty.

Annabeth’s grey eyes were searching, analytical. Like this, she looked wiser than a 23 year old should be. She lifted her chin at him. It was more a gesture of acknowledgement than superiority. “What happened?”

He scratched his head. Then he folded his hands. Then he ran them through his hair. Annabeth gave him time, knowing he would get to it eventually. He shook his head a little. “I was having a great day, you know? I really good one and those are rare to me.” He looked up at her, a little desperate to feel that way again. “And- and I get that I didn’t tell anyone this and shouldn’t be pissed or whatever the hell it is that I’m feeling, but… Jason. He just _mentioned_ depression and I was down low again, as if I’m allergic to a word, not bees.”

Annabeth clicked her tongue, going over the new information, nodding slightly. “Okay. Then what made it such a great day?”

Annabeth Chase knew everything. She could see right through all your walls and dig up the exact bit of knowledge she needed. It frightened Nico somewhat. He loved his walls; he really loved them and Annabeth’s peephole was ever-present and demanding.

“I don’t know,” he told her as honest as he could manage. “But I know I was in such a bliss when I came home that I painted the entire floor all night, and I didn’t stop before noon _today_.”

“Well,” Annabeth said with a small shrug and a light smile. “That explains a lot.” She gestured to his shirt and hair before turning to a buzzed costumer. Nico guessed he had paint in his hair too.

He got up and went for a round around the bar, picking up empty bottles and plastic glasses. Because they shared a mutual hate for the dishwasher, he let the glass ones stay with their purchasers. Clarisse nodded at him as he passed her and he returned it. She was sending away a minor. That reminded Nico of something. He scrambled all the glasses and bottles on a tray and headed back to Annabeth, his thoughts somewhat focused right now.

“Do you remember,” Nico started, putting down the tray. “what I asked of you when I first started working here?”

Annabeth didn’t need time to think. “Yeah, and it’s still creepy, Nico.”

Nico gave her a look. “Not really. It’s just precaution. I’m reminding you and hope you’ll tell Percy and everyone else who knows my name,” he urged. “I’ve talked to Jason, Leo and Piper about it.”

Annabeth was emptying the contents of the glasses into the sink. “I feel like I should ask why the sudden interest, but I’m also afraid to know. I don’t wanna take part in whatever illegal stuff it is that you’re doing in your free-time.” Annabeth looked at him. It was such a _knowing_ glance Nico started to wonder if he wore all his secrets on the outside. In a way, it wouldn’t surprise him if Annabeth knew about the graffiti, and it didn’t scare him either. At least he thought it didn’t. 

Nico took a few orders before sitting back into his chair. He sketched up the details for Westfort Avenue. He always brought sketches to the wall in question. An artist who has been painting for years doesn’t need sketches, but that doesn’t apply to _street_ artists. When you want to make something good, and actually put in some effort, you can’t stand before the wall with a rapid heartbeat and shaky hands and _not_ have a plan figured out beforehand. People would see you, or dogs would hear you, a bird will scare you and you think every sound is the last piece of freedom you’ll hear before _‘put your hands in the air’_. Graffiti wasn’t the worst crime to commit, but it was enough to Nico.

The rest of the night passed without incident. He was happy about it, but at the same time he felt like dying. Nothing worth mentioning meant boring and boring didn’t go well with tired. Annabeth and him closed up in a daze, said their goodbyes and walked their separate ways. She lived with Percy a few blocks up, and Nico lived on the other end of the city. He held onto his drawing in the jacket pocket. It felt like ages since he’d been down in the overshadowed parking lot. Should he check up on it? He didn’t have any of his usual clothes and he felt exposed to curious eyes. But he also didn’t carry any paint. He changed course abruptly. He could actually look at it was a viewer without stressing over police or witnesses.

When he closed in on the parking lot, he cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight. He kept going, turning the corner and heading down the slightly steep walk. His steps echoed as the walls grew taller the farther in he went. He saw his white streaks and still couldn’t make out what made Will think it was a _bird_. He shivered. He’d acted offended at the time, but the piece didn’t look like anything in particular right now. He unfolded his sketch, but it stared back at him, so he quickly put it away again.

Then Nico’s eyes drifted to a very yellow, very neon post-it note plastered by the side of his art. He ripped it from the wall to look at it with a frown.

“ _hi! :) met your friends today and heard you didn’t sleep. I didn’t tell them I knew you. Eat a banana and drink water, I hope it helps!_ ”

Nico stared at the note like it offended him. Which friends? Who knew him? He flipped the note and the world made sense.

“ _P.S. watch your language, even if it’s your friends_ ”

He felt a knot untangle itself in his gut. The doctor was Will. He felt strangely relived, but he guessed if he wanted anyone to place a note on his wall, he wanted it to be Will. He’d left a note for him. It had instructions he could follow to sleep better. Will cared about whether or not Nico slept. Will used _smilies_ , and Nico had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes at it.

He was grinning at it, but didn’t realize until he’d done it for so long his cheeks hurt. Then he glanced around to make sure no one was watching him. He stuffed the neon note in with his sketch and turned around – heading home feeling the tugging of that bliss from the day before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: sits in my star wars shirt and pyjamas intensely reading up spanish and italian swear words for gay english fanfiction all christmas  
> my relatives: what are you doing  
> me: being a disappointment to my country
> 
> Happy holidays, everybody!!


	6. Groundwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico is stuck and Will offends him so much, he un-sticks himself

Nico was being punished for not appreciating Leo’s gesture of friendship the night before. He had been too sleep-deprived to even consider manoeuvring through the paintings, so he’d crashed with Leo in 7’s sprinkle bed. Leo had been kicking most of the night, making Nico’s life a living, sleepless hell, that he just ended up shoving Leo off the bed. It seemed to be happening a lot in this apartment. Leo didn’t even wake up and kept snoring softly. But the punishment continued when Leo woke up a few hours later.

Leo smacked Nico’s shoulder and he jolted awake. “ _Qué chingados_ , Nico!” Leo shouted. _What the fuck, Nico?!_ “Fucking again? _What_ is wrong with wannabe-bed?!”

Nico covered his ears. His internal rest-o-meter wasn’t even close to full. He might have slept for four hours and he needed at least fourteen. He nuzzled himself back under the covers.

“ _Chingate_ ,” Leo breathed. _Fuck you_. “I could use a good night’s sleep too, you know? I left you 6 again so you could actually sleep _well_ among your mess – which you gotta clean up, by the way – since you didn’t sleep at all last night!” Leo was standing over Nico while he talked, sometimes pacing.

Nico curled into fetus position, making himself smaller. His hands were shaking as they pressed on his ears.

Leo kept on going without interruption. “You know, sometimes I wish you would consider _me_ a little. If you don’t want 6, then wake me the hell up and _tell me_ so at least one of us can get some decent sleep.”

Nico said nothing. This reminded him too much of the period from December through February. He was _not_ going to cry in front of someone two days in a row. Was it two days or three? He didn’t know; didn’t care. _I’m sorry, I was tired, I’m sorry_ , he wanted to say, but it felt like someone held a cold hand to his chest and the cold kept spreading and he couldn’t form words. He was too exhausted to fight it, but Leo wouldn’t let him sleep again. It was a battle between Leo’s shouting and the unending tiredness.

“ _Qué chingados_ , by the way,” Leo said spiteful. _You smell like shit_.

Nico nearly whimpered. “Sorry...” He sucked in a breath through his teeth. He was still buried under covers.

Leo stopped. It was a sort of stunned silence and it felt like it lasted forever. Nico waited for him to yell again, but it didn’t come.

The bed moved. “No – please – I’m sorry, Neeks.” His voice was careful now, and closer.  “I’m- I’m not even mad at you, I promise. I’m mad with other things, and it’s not your fault. Hell, you’re tired too and I-“

“ _Per favore_ ,” Nico pleaded, barely audible. Leo was silent and held impossibly still. Nico sighed. “Just…let me sleep.”

Leo got up and left the room without a word. Nico closed his eyes in defeat. Sleep wrapped around him like a warm, comforting blanket – tugging him back into unconsciousness.

 

When Nico woke up again, it was slow and nurturing. He wasn’t ripped from sleep like he had been the past week, instead it was as if the wave of dreams left him on the beach of the real world as it returned back to the ocean. He slowly went about his business, doing what apparently was secondary priorities to him like showering or eating anything of nutrition. Leo had left a note that included more apologies and saying he was meeting up with Jason again. It was Sunday. Probably. It didn’t really matter to Nico what day it was unless it was Thursday. Leo and Jason wasn’t going to a store since none were open, and Nico just prayed they weren’t going to Piper’s.

Sundays were slow for him as he spent the time waiting the day out until he could start doing his _real_ business. Nico actually did cleaned up 6 and watched a few of Piper’s new videos. They had an unlikely friendship, but both had the same sense of justice and that’s what drove them together. Piper’s vlog was one of the most popular ones in the country. She spoke of social and political issues and every now and then she would include Jason. Piper was the most quote-able celebrity of the year, and Annabeth had told him you couldn’t scroll through twitter or any other social media without seeing a picture or a .gif of her.

Nico smiled proudly as the header on her YouTube channel appeared on his screen. It was a piece he’d done before Christmas and Piper had loved it so much she often brought it up with either her friends or in her videos. It was painted on a dark building with white; a series with a wide diversity of teenagers were rising up from the ground holding all kinds of everyday electronics. The text above it was written in huge, white capital letters: “ _We are the leaders of the not-coming-back_ ” Credit was given to H.P.

Many of his social justice pieces had been featured in her videos, but he still held it to himself that he was the artist. The only one who knew was Leo – because it was unavoidable when he came slouching home three hours after his shift ended, covered head to toe, and threw empty spray paint cans into the closet.

Nico was restless and annoyed the rest of the day, as he waited for the safe loophole of time when most people were asleep to go out. Leo didn’t return. Nico decided that the mature thing was to text him and make sure he was alright. He also decided maturity was for idiots.

At two in the morning, Nico stood before his wall once again. _Too early_ , he told himself. There was no note today. He tried not letting it get to him. Nosing his face tube, he eyed the streaks. The streaks eyed him too. Sometimes it wasn’t entirely up to him how the result turned out, sometimes it was more like he was guided by the surface rather than overtaking it. He could throw away a canvas – he couldn’t throw away a wall. That made the permanency of it so grounding. He would miss, or a line wouldn’t have the right curve he wanted, and it wouldn’t be the end of the world because he would just have to work it through with the surface as a guide. He could cover it with black paint if he didn’t like it in the end, but what was a show of progress if he got rid of the bad ones along the way?

Nico had been standing there in the chilly October cold for fifteen minutes holding a can of white paint. He was glaring now. This happened sometimes. He knew exactly what he had to do, he knew where to start, but his will wouldn’t cooperate. Today he was doing the groundwork, the background, with shadowed and highlighted points five times wider than Nico’s body. But doing it would actually make the project real and not just sketchy uncertainty in his head. He had no idea how long the piece would be up before the government officials painted over it, but that was part of the thrill. It could be days or decades.

Nico closed his eyes shut and sighed. His nerves were already fried from the looming threat of _put your hands in the air_ – he didn’t _need_ to doubt himself now. The sky grew darker and he still hadn’t moved. The streaks and ragged lines were mocking him – teasing him – and he was starting to think he deserved it.

“Hey Nico,” someone close suddenly whispered.

Nico did _not_ shriek. He yelped high-pitched. He also did _not_ accidentally spray Will’s hospital clothes in self-defence. Will would probably tell a different story.

Nico tried to get his nerves under control. He slumped down onto the asphalt and his can rolled away from him, free from his stubborn grasp. “Hi,” he managed.

Will examined his shirt with white, moist paint across his chest. “This probably isn’t sanitary,” Will mumbled.

“It’s not,” Nico gasped, still trying to breathe evenly. “It’s toxic as fuck to eat and a hell to get out of your clothes.”

“Okay,” Will started, seeming unconvinced and worried. He sat down next to Nico and took his hand. Nico ripped it out of his grasp, frowning. Will gave him a look. “First of all, let me check your pulse.” Nico begrudgingly let him. Will mumbled something about his body temperature and Nico rolled his eyes. “Secondly, the note is gone so I know you know I told you to watch your language.” Will glared at him and it seemed like such an odd expression for him to have it was almost hilarious. But then, even in the barely lit parking lot, Nico saw it.

Honey and lapis.

He quickly checked with Jason’s features to be sure, but it was no mistaking it. Jason’s hair was sandy blond and his eyes were electric blue. Will’s hair, even now in the middle of the night, looked warm and soft, sun-kissed and lovely. He knew Will’s eyes were blue, but not sky-blue as he had first thought – it was the cleanest, most lapis blue colour Nico had seen.

And he was staring.

“What?” Will said, uncertainty slipping. “Just… use other words around kids, alright?”

Nico vaguely remembered Will was still holding his hand. He vaguely didn’t mind.

Will sat up a little, drawing his legs to him. “You seemed…” Will tilted his head looking for the right word. “…tense. Just now before I scared you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” Nico defended himself. Will smiled brightly, but it was a _knowing_ smile. Was it a blond thing? Jason didn’t seem to withhold information from anyone. Well, considering he rarely knew more than anyone else. Nico’s shoulders slumped, as he had still been tense. “I’ve been standing here just glaring at those stripes for half an hour.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem very productive.” Will was teasing, and Nico started glaring at him instead. Will didn’t budge.

“I _know_ that, jackass,” Nico said. Will began to protest, but Nico just waved at him, dismissingly. _Not sorry, get over it._ “My hand just won’t spray it. It won’t make it real.”

Will shrugged and stood up. Nico’s hand was cold again. Will picked up the stray can on the ground. “I don’t really know what that means, but…” Nico stared at him in utter shock as he casually sprayed a zigzag line on Nico’s wall. _Nico’s_ wall. “But now,” Will said as he eyed his latest artwork and shrugged again, “I’ve started it. So you gotta finish it.”

Will handed Nico the can and he accepted it at the loss of words. No one just _zigzags_ a public wall. No one touches Nico’s pieces with anything but hands. No one _casually walks away_ from the scene as if they didn’t just alter Nico’s entire existence. Nico sat in a heap of motionless lips, staring intensely at the spray can in his hands. The paint had betrayed him, and even though his logic told him that was impossible, art was logical.

Will closed in. “I, uh, I need to get to work,” he whispered, as if he would jump-scare Nico again. “Do you need to come with? Do you need medical attention?”

Nico shook his read rapidly. _No hospitals_. His daze lifted. “I’m fine,” Nico blurted unconvincing.

Will squinted at him. Nico glared.

Nico couldn’t just let an ugly, out of place _zigzag_ line ruin his groundwork. It was offensive. If it had been any other piece it might not have struck him this bad, but this was for _her_. He hesitantly stood up on unsteady feet, Will grabbed his arm for support, and he straightened. Nico took a deep breath, his arms heaving a little.

Will watched him. As he did, something changed and he seemed – content? “I gotta go,” Will mumbled and it seemed like he tried not to smile. “Good luck.” He let go of Nico’s arm and walked, at a normal pace this time, away from him. The fake light from the light posts slicked over his hair and it glowed in the night.

Nico didn’t follow him this time and he surprised himself by that. He had met Will two times before or so? Nico spent months or years building up trust so how did this boy who smiles like the sun manage to sneak around all his walls and Nico didn’t even mind? No, wait – he _did_ mind. A lot. Because he couldn’t be dealing with this now, at this point in time.

Nico turned front first to his wall. Her wall. He shook the can in a sure rhythm because he was determined now. He knew where to start and he could envision it. He felt confidence sooth over his shuddering chest. The night was quiet. In a distant street far away, something knocked over a trashcan. Nico smiled wickedly as the familiar sound of extinguished paint filled the parking lot.

 

-*-

Kayla was slouching over a bench in the wardrobe, eating yogurt. Will sat across from her with his back to the lockers, legs stretched out on the floor. It was a few other residents in the room, but they hardly cared. Kayla was a year away from getting her fellowship to become a cardiovascular surgeon. Will was a year away from going _back_ to pre-med. Kayla was in her early thirties but acted like a twelve year old. He guessed he shouldn’t expect more of himself when it was a solid ten year age gap between them. But Kayla had already been in Med School when she was his age.

“Hey, lighten up,” Kayla said, flicking some yogurt towards him. He strangled the urge to tell her that it was a _hospital_ floor they sat on. She was studying him.

“I’m falling behind.” Will’s voice was tired – but not the kind after being on call because it had only been three hours – he was _tired_ of thinking he was stuck; stuck in life. “I thought a nurse internship here would clear my head and make it easier to figure out what I want to do.”

Kayla didn’t say anything right away. She didn’t eat either. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she opened her mouth as if she wanted to ask him something. She changed her mind.

“What?” Will urged. “Spill.”

Kayla sat down against the locker across from him. “Are you sure,” she started, “that what you want to do is medical?”

Will snorted but she didn’t laugh. “Oh, you’re serious?” He didn’t expect to feel uncomfortable by this. “Of course? I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Kayla shrugged indifferently. “It’s just, our entire family is doing something medical.” Will was about to cut in that their cousin, Lee Fletcher, was trying to make it as an alternative pop-jazz artist in the streets of New York, but Kayla didn’t let him. “Do you know of anything else that interests you? Have you considered another field at all?”

Kayla’s pager went off. Will was grateful. “Sorry, Kayla, but I really don’t have the capacity to think about switching fields,” Will said as she got up.

“You’re coming with me, Solace,” she mumbled as she walked out of the locker room, eyes on her pager. “It’s the E.R. and a possible surgery. I’d want my scrub nurse there with me.”

Will faltered as he hurried after her. “What?” he demanded. They hadn’t really discussed it yet, but it was a sort of silent agreement that Will would always scrub in with her if it was a cardiac surgery.

She smiled at him over her shoulder. Her loose blonde curls danced as they jogged down to the E.R. “Yeah, bro. Might as well make it official, right?”

Will’s _yeah_ disappeared in the noise of the emergency room. Voices talked over each other, families demanded to know the conditions of their patients, wheels of beds or trays hummed on the floor all around them, and someone was shouting orders to the paramedics. Kayla was _bouncing_ with anticipation and when she glanced at Will with the biggest grin, he couldn’t help it either. People were either dead or they could be saved, and it all came down to them; Kayla and Will. Kayla darted forward, having found someone with an injury in her possible field. Will followed and let himself be swallowed by the noise and urgency of the E.R.

 

 

“One of her blood vessels collapsed when we tried to put a clamp to stop the bleeding, and that’s why I’m not wearing my scrub right now; it’s covered in splatted blood.” Will grabbed his yellow shirt for good measure.

“Well, it would have been a more interesting look,” Nico said, sitting beside him. His scrawny knees was a small distance from his own.

Will had finished the surgery with Kayla, but the crash victim died on the operating table. So this person died and somehow it was their fault, but Will had recovered from that fifteen hours ago. He knew not to dwell on the deaths of already dying people. He’d been heading home still riding on the excitement of the surgery when he saw Nico by the wall, as he tended to do now a days. Not that it was a regular occasion, but he found himself wanting to talk to the Nobody vandalizing his city. It made Will feel appreciated in a way, because Nico never expected him to show up again, it seemed. But he did. Will could just walk away every time, but he didn’t.

Will ate the yogurt Kayla had given him. “Does your roommate know? That you do this, I mean.” He gestured towards the wall. It was covered a few metres across with mainly white paint, and shaded in places that made it look like a giant, feature-less face. It shouldn’t be possible to shade to evenly with spray paint.

Nico glanced at him. He wasn’t much for sharing personal details. It actually looked like he would rather eat sand. Nico sighed. “Leo knows. I can’t really hide it when I come home early in the morning oozing of paint and carbon dioxide.” Nico half smiled. “I did hide it for some time though, but this time of the year, it’s hard to be out all night without a decent explanation.”

Will’s brows furrowed. “Why is that?” He ate another spoonful of yogurt.

Nico gestured to the sky. “The nights are longer.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing – which it was – but Will still didn’t get it. Nico saw his dumbfounded expression and rolled his eyes. “It’s better to be graffiti artist during the dark season so we don’t get caught in daylight.” Nico glanced at the wall almost in awe. “I’ve been planning this one since December.” He said it carefully, as if the confession was fragile.

Will looked at him. He seemed soft and almost human like this. Nico was like a shadow creature in Will’s life; he wasn’t actually there because he didn’t seem real enough. But like this, being passionate in so watchful, fumbling ways, Will was awestruck too.

Will shook his head a little. “Do you always use a good portion of the year to plan your vandalism?”

Nico gave him an unimpressed look. “No. Do you wait to treat sick people when you don’t have to put it off? I have to address an issue right when it arises. For the history books.”

Will’s brows shot upward. “You think your graffiti will be seen as historic masterpieces?”

Nico only shrugged. His gaze seemed far away. “You never know. I don’t know if I _want it to_ , but it won’t be up to me in a few centuries time. If humanity still exists by then.”

“We won’t with that attitude, at least.” Will reached into his bag, retrieved two water bottles, and handed one of them to Nico, who glared at him in return. Will’s shoulders slumped. “You did eat a banana, didn’t you?” Nico frowned and kept glaring at him. Will sighed. “I don’t know you well enough to figure if that’s a yes or no.”

Nico looked away and reluctantly took the water.

Will chuckled at his stubbornness. It faded so quickly to reasoning; Nico didn’t even fight for it. Nico begrudgingly drank his water, looking like compassion in others disgusted him. Will figured he was very independent and wasn’t used to being treated like he obviously needed to. He had ripped his jeans by the knee when Will found him today and it was bleeding badly, but Nico had just tied some bandages around his knee, jeans smeared into the wound and everything. It was an abomination to everything sanitary. And worst of it was that Nico didn’t let him check it out, because ‘ _I’m not taking my pants off for strangers in dark alleys’_. Will had told him he could take some of the dripping blood and figure out where he lived and force him to let Will help, anyways. Nico had replied with flipping him off.

Will pointed to the wall. “Do you usually take this long to finish something?”

He hadn’t meant for it to be offensive, but Nico glared at him, which was, as Will had come to know, his most preferred expression. “It kind of takes longer when an idiot doctor keeps interrupting me at 4am.”

“Nurse,” Will corrected.

“Hah. I knew you were too young,” Nico said smugly and took a swig of water.

This soothed over some of the anxiety left from his conversation with Kayla. He smiled broadly. Maybe he wasn’t that far off after all. Maybe he still got time to turn around and chase those two years he’ll lose to being a nurse. Maybe the world wasn’t ending because he took some time to set his head straight. He glanced at Nico beside him. He might have failed the _straight_ part.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so many loose ends oh my god. I swear I HAVE A PLAN, I'm gonna tie it all up. ...sometime. Soon. Maybe. Also, I'm not really sure of the Spanish in this one, but I'll edit it later if anyone notices. 
> 
> Here's an something from the upcoming chapter: 
> 
> “Nico, has this ignoring-Percy-thing actually paid off?” Leo asked, putting down his something.   
> Nico stared at him. He hadn’t expected this to come up. Not ever. Especially not wrapped up in how he wasn’t talking to Percy because Leo was actually asking something else entirely.   
> Leo held his gaze and Nico decided to play along for once. “I’m not expecting to feel better the longer Percy keeps out of my life, no.”  
> Leo blinked. His hands found his something to work on again. “He wants to talk to you, you know. Not about the crush thing, but… the other thing.”


	7. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico scales a wall and not everything is great

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a small time skip of one week. Also, Halloween has just passed in this story, but it's not mentioned because I got no idea what it actually is since we don't celebrate it in my country - so we're just ignoring it in Clairé Obscure because I got the power to do so. hah.

The days passed like that and Nico got a feeling he was putting off finishing Westfort on purpose. He may or may not have learned when Will clocked out and only worked on the wall then. And he _could_ be avoiding buying the few colours he needed to finish it off. He was distracted at work, and he was too distracted to notice that Annabeth _didn’t_ notice. Westfort was a small developement because 1. It meant a lot to him, 2. He didn’t quite know how to deal with his grief but this was _helping_ somewhat, 3. He kind of wanted the process to be a slow burn, and 4. Will kept showing up. He didn’t mind any of these reasons, but Nico felt like owed it to Bianca to be done already. It was for _her_. He had been working on the same piece for two whole weeks. He didn’t feel like he was stuck or suffocating like he thought he would, but he felt _guilty_.

Bianca’s death kept lurking in the back of his head when he didn’t let it overcome him on bad days. Westfort was a project Nico had been pushing all his grief and loss into – the planning, the colours, the running to and from – he had directed everything about his sister’s death towards the project even since December. He went the entire summer sketching, redesigning, rethinking. Bianca’s death had been brutal. He didn’t want to think that she died for nothing. But she _had_.

Nico shook his head. He was not going to think about it. He was going to finish his piece and be done being sad about it. It was Bianca’s choice and he wasn’t honouring her by thinking her choice to do what _she_ was passionate about had been wrong. But when it had made him lose a sister, it was hard not to.

He shook his head more violently. He was _not_ going to think about it.

“Hey, man. You okay?” Leo asked from the floor. Parts, cables, and dignity surrounded him. Nico lacked all those things.

They were over their little fight as Leo got to use the good bed for a whole week. They’d seen little of each other since, though, but that was due to Nico’s hours awake happened to be the only hours Leo had in between work and sleep, to which he spent parts hunting with Jason when he was done at the police academy.

Ugh. Jason started the academy this fall and Nico had made his opinions about it clear. Jason had told him he didn’t get that privilege anymore. “Yeah. How’s Jason? You see him more than I do.”

Leo snorted. “Apparently I see them _all_ more than you do. You should come out with us tonight,” Leo said off-hand. They were going to _Sidetracked_ because Piper was working tonight and because they loved to try embarrass her. “And Jason’s fine. He loves his school more than collage, so I think he did the right thing.”

Nico rolled his eyes. He would’ve expected Leo to be on Nico’s side in this matter, being Latino, but Leo had told Nico that there were no sides – just what Jason wanted. And that made him a better friend than Nico could ever hope to be. He really, _really_ wanted to be there for Jason and be supportive, but Nico wasn’t a fan of the police force as a whole because of their daily, racist tendencies. He’d lost count of how many pieces he’d done against the oppressive government officials. It was the sort of graffiti Piper never talked about. Probably because of Jason. Probably because she was a budding celebrity and had to choose her words wisely. Probably because she didn’t know how to feel about it with being a Cherokee girl and having an officer-to-be as a boyfriend… if Nico had to guess.

She had un-barricaded herself after a few days in solidarity, but Nico had yet to see her. She had visited Jason, though. Whatever that seemed to bother her wasn’t as prominent now, at least.  

“Nico, has this ignoring-Percy-thing actually paid off?” Leo asked, putting down his something.

Nico stared at him. He hadn’t expected this to come up. Not ever. Especially not wrapped up in how he wasn’t talking to Percy because Leo was actually asking something else entirely.

Leo held his gaze and Nico decided to play along for once. “I’m not expecting to feel better the longer Percy keeps out of my life, no.”

Leo blinked. His hands found his something to work on again. “He wants to talk to you, you know. Not about the crush thing, but… the other thing.”

Nico almost chortled. “Me and Percy sorted out that crush thing years ago. It wouldn’t be anything to talk about.” But his mind tracked back the last time he _had_ spoken to Percy Jackson for longer than a minute. A chill went up his spine at the memory of his own voice. _Tell the dead, Percy. They might actually give a fuck._

It had been a very cold day – both physically and emotionally. When Nico tried to remember, the room seemed colourless and unforgiving, waiting for the misstep Percy would take that would give Nico a good enough reason to tell him off.

Leo dragged him to the grocery store near by; both because Leo had no idea what real food that’s not take-out was and because he wanted to spy on the cashier with long golden-brown hair. Nico had olive skin and hers was darker, but at the same time, few were paler than Nico despite his origins. Leo often did all the grocery shopping because of her, but didn’t buy the things they actually _needed_ due to having an attention span like a housefly.

Nico was grimacing at some bananas when someone stepped into his view. The stranger was familiar, in the same way people waiting outside a doctor’s office seemed familiar. Nico’s eyes flickered between the bananas in his hand and the stranger. _Oh_. He held them up to him, but the guy just shook his head and walked off in another direction. Nico slowly placed the bananas in the cart, mumbling. “Well, that was weird.” Leo found him again then and they went to the register. Nico paid for it in cash.

Outside, Nico excused himself to Hazel’s shop, but not after promising that he _would_ show up tonight. At least for a little while.

The shop was located in a tangled bunch of streets where signs made no sense and every driver just hoped to god that they could trust the other ones in traffic because that was all they got going for them. Frank Zhang was restocking some shovels when he pushed the door open. Warm air greeted him in from the early November cold.

“Hi Frank,” Nico greeted.

Frank looked over and was mildly confused. “You never greet me. Even though I’m the first one you always meet.”

Nico didn’t really see how this mattered. He shrugged and headed over to the spray paint section.

Frank lurked behind him. “I think Harry is _human_ , Hazel,” Nico heard him whisper by the back door.

Nico glared at him. “You guys still calling me that?”

Hazel raised her voice. “You’ve been pretty insistent on not tellin’ us, and you gotta admit it’s better than ‘Grey-13’.”

Nico rolled his eyes. He turned back to the shelf and found a hickory brown colour – a dark resonating shade but still warm enough to be exactly what he needed. He pointed to it. “Do you have this in normal tube paint?” he asked them. “Oh, and also this one?” He pointed to another pine green colour.

Hazel said a quick _yeah_ as she disappeared into the back. Frank looked after her. Nico rolled his eyes so much they almost fell out of his head. The only two employees of this shop had been dancing around each other since before Nico started doing public street art.

Hazel scanned the tubes and mentioned how it wasn’t Thursday yet. Nico frowned. “Yeah, I know, but I’ve been putting this off, and I can’t do that anymore – no matter how attractive that nurse I always run into is.” He figured that by this point, he might as well say it out loud and make it the truth. At least this time, he got to _choose_ his truth.

Frank blinked at him. “Sorry, but I thought you were gay?” he said as he handed Nico the small plastic bag.

“Yeah,” Nico breathed as he left, not really answering the question – which seemed to be the theme of his life. Through the window, he saw Hazel elbowing Frank in the gut and Nico smiled a little.

 

-*-

It was Wednesday afternoon when Cecil stormed into their apartment, like he usually did for dramatic effect, and whipped his head around looking for Will.

Will did a small wave from the couch. He hadn’t forgotten about Cecil’s ass sweat, but the couch was too comfortable to avoid. Cecil dashed forward in the small apartment and slung himself down on the couch beside Will. “You won’t _believe_ who I trailed today, Will.”

“Cecil,” Will warned him. “Michael Jackson is _dead_ , we’ve been over this: that guy from city hall is _not_ him.”

Cecil waved him off. “We don’t know that. They never found his body.”

“Yes, they _did_ –“ Will looked to the ceiling in desperation.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Cecil cut him off. He fished his phone out of his pocket and showed Will a picture. “I found your bartender at the supermarket.”

 _Your bartender_. The tips of Will’s ears reddened. It was definitely Nico in the picture. He was wearing grey sweats and a black hoodie, his hair an unruly mess, and stood scowling at some bananas. He had a basket with milk and a few other groceries in it. Will snorted at the sight – mostly because he was the reason for Nico’s resentment, but also because he looked so approachable in such a daily setting. And the _hair_. It was sticking up in places and flattened other places as if he had been dragged out of bed to go shopping and he wasn’t happy about it. Slowly but surely, the supernatural creature that was Nico in Will’s life turned into a normal person.

“Dude, you’re grinning like a mad man.” Cecil snatched his phone back. “I’ll send it to you, but as I was saying: I trailed him. He was grocery shopping with this scrawny, hyper-active guy. They looked like an odd pair as opposite as they were. But I don’t think they’re together because they went their separate ways from the store, so I stalked him down a few streets and –“

“That’s really creepy, man.”

Cecil gave him a look. “He went inside a shop at the cluster. That’s a bad neighbourhood.”

“And you still followed him,” Will stated.

Cecil went on without interruption. “When he left the shop he did this freakish thing.” Cecil was more confused than annoyed by the point and Will was intrigued. “He _scaled_ the _wall_ , Will!”

 Will scratched his head. “What?”

“He _scaled a wall_. I didn’t see it all ‘cause I didn’t wanna be too obvious, but he ledged onto window sills and whatever hold he could find, and fucking _climbed_ at an inhuman speed to the _roof_.” Cecil was both confused and slightly scared.

Will could only think _Well. That explains his decent biceps._ Will’s expression blanked.

“Afterwards, I went into the shop and when I mentioned what just happened, an Asian dude just shrugged and said, ‘Harry is weird like that’, like, what the fuck, I thought his name was Nick?”

Will’s head was swimming, thoughts overloaded. He didn’t know if Cecil forgetting Nico’s name was a good thing. If ‘Nico’ was even his name – was ‘Harry’ and alias? Or was ‘Nico’ the alias? Did street artists _need_ aliases? Did he even know this person he met in secret alleys and whispered secret things to. No. No, he didn’t. And now Nico was off getting himself injured _scaling freaking buildings_. Did he even have a doctor – he’d refused Will to check over his knee the week before. He groaned. This guy would be the end of Will Solace.

“Tell you what, Will,” Cecil said clasping his hands together. “We’re going out tonight. To that bar he works at. Both so you can ask him out because _jesus,_ you’re still thinking about the picture – and because I need to learn that.

 

-*-

Piper was juggling bottles behind the counter in the dim-lit bar. She had skill and balance in ways Nico did not, and she enjoyed the attention it provided and the more drinks were ordered because of it. Drew was simmering by the register, having flipped off some drunk girls saying they can turn her lesbian. Nico and Leo sat by Piper’s end as Jason came up to them.

He leaned over the counter to give Piper a kiss. “Hi beautiful,” he said as Piper ignored bar code and let him kiss her quickly.

Leo scoffed next to Nico. “What about the rest of us? I want my looks acknowledged as well!”

Jason glanced over all of them. “Hi _tres beautifules_?” he asked.

“You disgust me,” Leo and Nico proclaimed in unison, for different reasons. Leo knocked back the rest of his beer and Nico stared intensely at the wooden counter like it offended him.

Piper laughed joyfully as she cleaned a glass. Her hair was cut evenly now. It used to reach past her armpits, but now it was choppy and rougher above her shoulders. It suited her and she seemed content, her kaleidoscopic eyes gleaming warmly at Jason. Nico didn’t think he’d ever looked at Jason like that, so he was glad someone did now.

“Dude, I did some researched and I found the generator we need,” Leo told Jason. Nico sat in-between them and let the conversation run over his head. It was only mildly uncomfortable. Nico rarely hung out with both Jason and Piper for reasons that would soon be proven. Leo was talking about his project for the fair, and Nico wasn’t in the place to tell him that being offered a spot in a program was highly unlikely.

Nico cut in, “You should take progress pictures. You know, to prove you’ve built it, whatever it is.” Nico was sure Leo hadn’t actually _told_ him what he’s working on – either because he didn’t have a name for it, or because Nico wouldn’t know what it was. Never the less, he wanted Leo to know he cared. At least a little. Just enough so Leo didn’t think Nico considered it unimportant.  

Leo gasped and slapped Nico’s back. “You’re right, my dark, grim friend!”

Nico got the next round of beers and paid for it right away in cash. There was no point in putting it on a tab when he didn’t know how long he’d stay. Piper eyed him, amused, as she went to the register.

Leo was avoiding Nico’s gaze, like he had been since Nico got home from the cluster earlier and if it had been anyone else, Nico wouldn’t have cared, but Leo feeling guilty about something was about as bad as backtracking on a highway – unpredictable and certainly catastrophic. Nico didn’t push him about it, he wasn’t a people person, and he did _not_ need to deal someone else’s problems when he currently had enough of his own.

A few hours went by and Jason and Piper started to get unbearable. Drew sent Nico a pleading look from across the bar. She loved gossip and budding romances, but this love story was a year old and wasn’t anyone’s hot topic anymore. Which meant that Drew, Nico, and Leo were stuck acknowledging that they had no love life – Nico was fine with it and Drew resented it.

But Nico wasn’t fine with getting _Jason and Piper_ rubbed in his face for longer, so he excused himself outside. They could see him through the windows if they wanted to check up on him. Unnecessary human interaction wasn’t Nico’s forte.

He buried his freezing hands in his jacket pockets. Hell freezes over before Nico admits his leather jacket isn’t warm enough for the late north-American autumn. Cars screeched in the background in the main street and faint footsteps of small crowds echoed in the narrow alleys. Connor wasn’t by the door, he’d gone to clean up something spilled by the speakers, leaving Nico to the quiet noise of the night. _Sidetracked_ didn’t attract a lot of people, but it attracted the people they wanted. Meaning it was few people, but it was the regulars, like Mr D., that kept them in business.

It still brought in a few stray strangers. Such as Will and his friend Cecil waltzing towards him, creating a ruckus in his hushed evening.

“Hey Nick! Or Harry, I don’t know anymore,” Cecil greeted with a much too friendly and too dramatic wave.

Nico stiffened. Cecil was cheerful and Will was glancing from Nico to Cecil, shrugging uncomfortably. Nico’s stare was hard and he said nothing.

Cecil’s smile wavered. “Well,” he blurted, clearing his throat. “I’m, uh, gonna go inside. Will, you show him the thing, I’ll find a seat.”

Nico’s mind raced and he grabbed Cecil’s jacket sleeve. “Not by the counter.” His eyes landed in Will. “The bartender’s a bitch.” That was a lie, but he didn’t need Will more entangled in his life than he already was, and if Jason figured they knew each other, he’d never let it go.

Cecil mumbled an _okay?_ over his shoulder as he slipped inside.

Nico was still looking at Will, not quite meeting his eyes because _lapis_ and he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Will was grinning at him. He had the kind of smile that lightened up his every feature and sort of lightened up the street too. Like the light averted itself to him because he’s the brightest thing here. Nico knew this because he was staring at his mouth instead, which to be honest, wasn’t any better.

“Hi,” Will said. He was trying not to laugh, but Nico’s forced glare seemed to make it harder to resist. “Harry, is it? Or is it actually Nico? It’s not like I can tell the difference.”

Nico narrowed his eyes at him. “Where did you get ‘ _Harry’_ from? That’s not common knowledge.”

Will shrugged a little, still smiling broadly. “Cecil talked to some people by the cluster and they referred to you as Harry. Now what’s you name again?”

Nico blanked. “…Did he call me _Nick?_ ”

“Does it matter?”

“Did he just _waltz_ into my drug store?”

“ _Nico_ ,” Will complained. Nico was smirking. He wasn’t much for personal details and Will knew this.

Nico gestured dramatically. “Well, how do I know your name is actually Will and not… you know, Won’t?”

Will rolled his eyes and sighed as if he’d heard this exact joke too many times in his life. He held out something plastic to Nico and he took it.

Nico’s eyes widened. “Your driver’s license?” He looked up at Will, who nodded. He studied the plastic card. _Will Solace, born: June 24 th 1994_. This was personal. Very, _very_ personal. Nico felt his chest tighten a little. “Solace. Fitting. You realize I could kill you more easily now?”

Will didn’t look amused. “I was actually convinced you were a hit man the first time I met you. Not so much anymore.”

Nico choked. “ _Me?_ I draw on walls, _Solace_. I’ve never even punched anyone. _You’re_ probably closer to killing someone than I am.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Will agreed. “You’re kinda small.”

Nico whipped around and jabbed a finger in his chest. “ _You’re_ just really tall, jackass.”

Will chuckled and Nico felt it in his hand. “How you even reach the upper sections of your wall, that’s all I’m thinking about.”

Nico glared at him. “When you start rappelling for your work, you can come back to criticise my job.”

Will considered this and nodded towards the bar. “I thought this was your job.”

“It pays the bills,” Nico deadpanned.

“So vandalism isn’t paid work?”

Nico gave him the sink eye. Sarcastic Will wasn’t a person he had wanted to get to know but was apparently stuck with. He pretended he didn’t like it.

Will fished his phone from his pocket, that stupid lovely smile not faltering. “Cecil sent it to me, and I think you’d wanna see it.”

Nico was puzzled as Will angled the screen for the both of them to see. “ _What_ ,” Nico exclaimed. He tried to grab the phone, but Will kept it out of his reach. It was a picture of him from earlier today, at the grocery store. His hair was a mess and was in his pyjamas by the fruit aisle. Then Nico remembered that the stranger he’d tried to offer bananas to had been Cecil and the world made sense again. “You don’t make _Cecil_ eat bananas, Will!” was the only logical thing Nico could come up with.

Will snorted. “He never listens to me. Anyway, were you still asleep in this picture because –“

“ _No_ , fuck you, and delete this, you absolute monster.” Nico had always thought he knew how to pick his fights, but he was always bickering with this blonde idiot, and now he had proof of Nico’s existence and he didn’t like it.

Will shook his head, amused. He glanced at something behind Nico. “I mean, I could, but Cecil’s got the original and it’s already in my computer, so.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “I don’t like this.” But Will wasn’t looking at him. He stepped a little closer to Nico, still staring at something behind him, eyes hard and unnerving. “What is it?” Nico asked in a hushed voice.

“Nico.” Nothing else, just his name, came from behind him.

All other sounds drowned out and the time-line halted. Behind him, there was a shuffling of jeans and rubber boots. Nico shut his eyes in denial as he turned, slowly, to face what he should have thought of as inevitable, but had considered avoidable. He thought he was prepared, but Percy’s mournful face sent Nico staggering back into Will’s chest. Percy eyed Nico tiredly, as if he’d been desperate to talk to him for ages, and now that the chase was over, he could finally let the exhaustion take him.

“Nico,” he repeated, stronger this time.

Nico didn’t budge. He was afraid if he left Will’s chest, he might run away and he didn’t do that anymore. He didn’t face his problems either, but he was trying to find a path in between.

Percy took this as a good sign. “I need- I need to talk to you.” Percy stayed put, not wanting to test how far he could push this.

Thing is, they _had_ talked since Christmas. Small snippets of conversation and comments when he visited Annabeth at work, or when Nico actually hung out with the lot. But never like this. Never head-on and alone because Percy _knew_ it would scare Nico off. This was brand new and Nico was, in fact, left scared and uncomfortable.

Nico found his voice. “I don’t want to.” Both of them knew this, but only one of them cared. He felt Will’s hand on his back, carefully placed between his shoulder blades. It wasn’t a dismissive gesture, but rather comforting and supporting. And strangely intimate.

Percy shuddered, but only barely, as a cold wind rippled through them. “I know,” he admitted, “but I _have_ to.” The desperation seeped into Percy’s plea and Nico stiffened.

Nico didn’t reply, just stared at him in disbelief. Percy’s hair was ragged and uneven, like he’d run his hands through it two times too many. He was _tired_. His green eyes wasn’t as prominent as before and he looked like the embodiment of a worn, over-washed sweater. This wasn’t the Percy Jackson Nico had been crushing on – this was the Percy Jackson who thought he’d never get peace from the blood on his hands.

Will shifted behind him and reassuring pressure increased on his back before it disappeared altogether. “I’m gonna give you guys some time,” he excused himself and went inside. Nico’s back was left cold. Percy didn’t offer him as much as a glance.

Nico shut his eyes again and cursed himself. “There’s nothing to talk about, Percy,” Nico warned him. This was Percy’s last out.

Percy stepped forward, arms outstretched as he was about to lose his cool. “There’s _plenty_ to talk about, Nico di Angelo, and I think I have the right to explain myself!”

Nico bore his eyes into him, standing shockingly still. The world tilted. Percy realized his mistake a moment too late as Nico thundered, “You have a _right?!_ What kind of bullshit excuse is that to get me to talk? Jackson, you’ve got _no_ rights in this so don’t give me that!” Every word fed his anger, but it was too satisfying to stop.

Percy ran his hands through his hair, a trait Nico had adopted over the years and was trying to quit. “I know- I _know_ , but you can’t ignore me for months and expect me to just be fine with it!”

“Yes, I _can!_ ” Nico exclaimed as he stepped back. “I get to do that!”

“NO!” Percy shouted. He was still tired, shoulders slumped, but the same kind of tired polar bears are after waking up in the spring, with only little energy left to hunt for food. Nico was Percy’s food.

Percy Jackson never shouted at the people he cared about, and Nico didn’t think he cared because he’d done his best to cut him out of his life, but that stung him. Percy was shaking. He was exhausted and pissed off and just wanted to get this over with.

There was a silence, tense and unbearable. A rock song played in the background from the bar. He wanted Percy to realize what he’d just done, but Percy didn’t seem to care no matter how long he waited.

Nico’s shoulders fell together. He didn’t want to do this but the other boy didn’t seem to let him go. In a voice barely above a whisper, he said:

“…You enlisted her, Percy.”

Percy gaped a little, and swallowed. He looked away from Nico’s accusing eyes. “I didn’t…”

Nico burst, like ice on a lake breaking. His eyes burned. “You didn’t _what?_ You didn’t think a golden star and recommendation from _Perseus Jackson_ would get her exactly where she wanted to go?” He was yelling and gesturing in ways his body had forgotten. Nico’s sorrow was always present in the back of his mind and now it etched onto his surface, demanding attention and blood and tears. “Exactly,” Nico spat. “You didn’t _think_.”

Percy’s eyes were locked on the ground in shame. Somehow, it made Nico’s rage even worse. He didn’t want to be the only one yelling. He felt himself move into the wrong, but seeing someone else take on his burden, for even just a minute, was addicting. In his head he knew he was playing the victim in a scenario where the victim is already dead, but he also thought what difference does it make when no one was around to call him out on it.

Nico took a shaken breath and could see Percy steel himself for another blow. This was the role he was playing; Nico’s punch bag. Because he refused to talk about Bianca when it didn’t matter, and it only mattered with Percy. “I know,” Nico whispered, his voice breaking, “that going to Afghanistan was what she wanted. Was what she thought was _right_. But _you_ , Percy, you made it happen.” Percy hesitantly met Nico’s eyes. He must have looked horrible, because Percy _winched_. “If it weren’t for you,” Nico sobbed, holding Percy’s gaze. His voice was hushed, raw, and pleading, “she’d still _be here_. She’d still be here, annoyed and breathing – not blown up into particles so I had nothing to bury.”

Percy was staring at him. He didn’t try to say anything. He probably didn’t know what to say, which was why Nico didn’t want this conversation in the first place.

Nico felt himself laugh bitterly through his sobs. “We’re catholic, did you know? We’re catholic and I had nothing to bury.” It felt like an old wound was ripping itself open and it was as if it never really healed. He couldn’t remember when it didn’t hurt to live. Nico wasn’t going to stand here and repeat what he’d said months ago to whatever new explanation Percy was going to offer.

Nico turned around to leave. His footsteps didn’t echo, or maybe they did and his hearing had gone numb. Percy didn’t follow him as he rounded a corner. He didn’t follow him as he started jogging through the main street. He didn’t follow him when he at some point had started sprinting through the city, as fast as his feet could carry him. His breath hitched as he cried and ran feeling like a fourteen-year-old boy again, sprinting home after the school told him his mom was dead, sprinting to his sister because she needed him and he needed her. Who was he running to this time? There was no one he could go to, and he didn’t want to go back to a home that Bianca didn’t live in. Nico didn’t know where he was going until he was standing there. His graffiti glared at him and he almost fell backwards.

Artists want to start with the part of the art that’s supposed to capture most attention, what’s supposed to draw the audience in, and then work on the rest of the piece and sculp it accordingly. Nico’s eye-catcher was literally the eyes. They weren’t done, but they were a furious mix of brown, black and green – like he had intended. He’s making this for _her_. Nico felt his heart clench in on itself. How could he had thought he was ready to do this? How could he had thought that he had mourned enough and this was the next step of his grief? He wasn’t nearly there and he couldn’t breathe again.

Nico launched himself onto the wall, trying to tear off the paint with his fingers. He wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t ready. Nico sobbed loudly as it didn’t come off. It was permanent and present and everlasting. Nico’s nails were bleeding and leaving marks on the piece, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He had to get it _down_. He had to undo it, it wasn’t right, he wasn’t _ready_. He was doing it for her and he couldn’t remember why he’d started. He couldn’t remember planning it, but now it was _there_ , on the wall that was impossible to destroy because it wasn’t a fucking canvas. He made a strangled noise. His nails were bleeding badly as he kept clawing on the cement, kept hoping they would by some miracle find a hold and he could tear it off. But Nico di Angelo didn’t believe in miracles.

He slumped down on his knees, tears pressed on at he looked up on his wall – _her_ wall. He couldn’t remember why he’d thought he was ready to do this. He couldn’t remember why he kept doing it, why he hadn’t stopped, why he wasn’t finished yet.

He could only visualize her brilliant smile, hat slightly askew, when she told him they would fly her out in a week.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured this chapter was like 5,7k instead of my usual 3, but let's be honest, would you really had wanted me to stop in the middle of that
> 
> Did you know that if you cry in front of your computer at Wayne's Coffee, you don't get a drink on the house - only public humiliation? The fanfictions are LYING TO YOU
> 
> sorry for all the ice metaphors, you see, I'm norwegian. Also, I realize I threw you guys into this with absolutely zero preparation, but what do you want me to do? "Warning: sadness" ? that's not how i do business


	8. Fingerprints

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico is cold

Nico didn’t go home that night. He didn’t go anywhere, really. He’d stopped crying at some point and settled for endless asphalt staring. He was starting to wonder if he was imagining the patterns he saw on the ground. Somewhere along that train of thoughts, he’d fallen asleep, which hadn’t been his best non-decision. In this part of the country, temperatures drop drastically during the night because of the hills surrounding the city, and cold seeks lower points. Nico finds himself in a dark corner of a parking lot with no light source, as the degrees drop, and he can’t find it in his sleeping self to care. He falls in and out of consciousness for probably hours. His fingers sort of hurt.

Something bumped into him. Repeatedly. Someone was shaking him. “Hey, _hey_ , you alive?” It was a woman. Probably. Nico wasn’t one to judge. Especially not when _he_ had been the one who managed to fall asleep in the street.

Nico tried to give a thumbs-up and realized he couldn’t. It ached and Nico grumbled.

The woman grabbed his hand. “Your body temp is way too low and you got several infections.” Her voice was steady and unwavering. She shuffled something that wasn’t him. Nico felt himself slipping back into the unknown. “I’m taking you to the hospital, it’s a few blocks up.”

Nico _thought_ he told her ‘no hospitals’, but he was already gone.

 

When he came to, it was because he was woken up by shouting voices. He felt strangely – uncomfortably – warm. He didn’t feel it on his skin, which was the strange part, and it felt fake, which was the uncomfortable part. He opened his eyes and squinted at the way too bright room as his eyes adjusted. His breath hitched. _No_. He looked to his right and saw he was attached to an IV and he followed the cord to see it sticking into his –

Nico audibly gasped. His fingers were less bloody, yes, but his nails looked tortured and ripped. Then he scowled. He’d smeared his dirty jeans into an open wound and that hadn’t done anything, but _this_ gives him infections? Then his head cleared and he remembered what kind of places had IVs sticking into people.

The shouting continued across the room without interruption.

“We don’t know what he’s allergic to – we have to _wait_ until his labs come back in.” This was a man.

“So, while you stay here and _wait_ all you want, I’m actually going to do something useful.” Nico recognized that voice.

“Ma’am, you can’t stay here. Visiting hours are over, and you’re not a close family member.”

“I am his sister; I’ve told you and three others so.” Nico knew that wasn’t Bianca. Speaking of, hello, sorrow. Nico simmered over last night’s events as the man sighed somewhere in the room.

“It’s obvious that you’re not related, ma’am. Please just go to the waiting area.”

“What are you, some kind of racist? I won’t tolerate this,” she accused.

“No, ma’am.” The man sounded like he had been dealing with this woman for a long while now. Nico briefly wondered if it was Hazel, but he knew Hazel’s voice and that wasn’t her.

“If my skin was whiter, we wouldn’t have _had_ this argument. You’re letting me stay with my little brother.”

“We need proof that you’re related, but he doesn’t have any identification.”

“His _name_ is Benjamin Ramírez-Arellano. I brought him in and I’m claiming him. And I’m not going to stay here and repeat it until your racist head finally keeps up.” This woman was not to be crossed and Nico felt himself being slightly afraid of her.

There was just a sigh in response and the click of a door closing. Footsteps closed in and Nico’s curtain was ripped away. The woman eyed him and closed the curtain behind her. “You’re up,” she stated, standing beside his cot.

Nico fiddled with his shirt hem. They’d let him keep his clothes on, but his jacket was slung over the chair beside him. He tried not to panic, but it was even harder with a Latina who looked like an empress with a stare like one, watching over you. Nico tried to scramble his thoughts into some kind of order. They didn’t know who he was, but they’d taken his blood. Not that they would find anything there. How much did IVs and overnight stays cost? It was daylight seeping through the window, so he had been about for a few hours, at least. He was safe because he’d taken his precautions. And because this woman had been watching over him, not only when she found him, but also stayed with him.

Nico met her eyes. She wasn’t smiling. Neither was he. “Thank you,” Nico told her. She didn’t seem like the type to wanted speeches of gratitude.

“Yes,” she simply said. “What’s your name?” Her voice was clear and sharp, making no room for interruption or disobedience. She was simply dressed in jogging wear and running shoes, her dark brown hair in a long braid over her shoulder. Her skin was a rich caramel colour and her eyes were as sharp as her voice.

“I don’t know,” Nico lied, as convincing as possible.

Her brows furrowed. “My name is Reyna. They said you might have some mental confusion, but they didn’t see a concussion.”

Nico stiffened. “They scanned my head? They took an MRI?”

Reyna dismissed him. “They had to; you have moderate hypothermia.”

How much did an MRI cost? And he hadn’t even consented to this. There had to be some laws against this. Not that he could go to the police, but it would be nice to know he had rights. _Jesus, I’ve been conscious in a hospital for three minutes and I already think I’m privileged_.

He swallowed, and coughed. Reyna didn’t pat his back, for which he was grateful, but looked mildly uncomfortable. “Could you get me some water?” Nico asked in between coughs. “Please? And something edible?” He didn’t say _food_ as hospitals are known for serving inedible foods. Not that he would eat it.

Reyna nodded once and slipped through his curtain. He had no idea which floor he was on, but he was about to find out. He waited until he heard the door close after her before he threw off his covers and yanked the needle out of his wrist. It strained his fingers, but he fought through it. He could not be caught in a hospital, it couldn’t happen. Nico felt a little dizzy as he slid off the cot and ran to the window. His floor was several stories up, but nothing he couldn’t handle. His biggest problem was how do you maneuver through an ant farm of health care personnel when you look like you’re dying. With long strides, he went for the door. It was surprisingly easy to go unnoticed when you weren’t in hospital wear, but there were no signs that could lead him anywhere.

He got to a desk with a shaggy blond guy behind it, punching in numbers ad filling in some paper. He looked bored out of his mind.

“Hey,” Nico said. The man didn’t look up. “Um, I’m here to –“

“Visiting hours are over,” the other cut in, not looking away from his paper work. “Go sit in the waiting area.” He said it mechanically.

Nico rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but I don’t know where that is.”

The man sighed, long, like his soul was leaving his body. He briefly glanced at Nico’s shirt. “Elevator down to third.”

Nico left without another word, not wanting to push his luck. He walked superfast down the hallway and dodged several nurses pushing wheelchairs. The elevator was a small space, and Nico swore the elderly doctor behind him was breathing down his neck. He’d covered the spot on his hand where the needle had been, with his other hand. The elevator dinged open at the third floor and Nico stepped out.

He froze on spot. Will Solace was standing in the middle of the room, talking to a middle-aged woman, in his nurse scrubs. Nico tuned out the part of his mind that chanted _honey and lapis_. There was no way he could get across the room to the main entrance without being spotted. An elevator opened to his right and Nico didn’t even hesitate. He got off on the first floor that opened. Steps were scurry as he stalked in whichever direction. He had no idea where he was – every floor looked the same.

-*-

Nurses didn’t have pagers, but they were all called to the same conference room along with several residents. Apollo did not look pleased, which was really the closest you got to _angry_ with him. He was scowling and looked more like a petty teenager got getting it _his_ way, than a pissed off adult. Will stood by Lou Ellen who had joined them for the fun of it. Most of her hair was chestnut brown, but half of her hair from ears and down was bleached blue, green, purple, and red. It was the most prominent when she wore it in a ponytail, as she did now. She had shamed Will for not being more visible about his sexuality before, but he had only countered with that she did it enough for the both of them.

“We’ve lost a patient.” Apollo didn’t waste time when he was anything other than happy. His scowl deepened. “Literally _lost_ him. We have a woman claiming to be his sister, but not biologically. Although, after announcing that he was missing, she disappeared too, so we don’t really trust her.”

Lou Ellen snorted silently. It wasn’t the first time they’d lost a patient, but it was never a pleasant event. The office staff was never involved in the search, which meant she got to watch nurses search the whole hospital fanatically. She would probably get snacks for the show.

Apollo made way for Kayla. “We need to find him ASAP; he has moderate hypothermia and according to his ‘sister’, he can’t remember his name, so the mental part is a bit jacked.” Kayla caught herself before rolling her eyes. She worked with heart conditions, not head. What was a head without a heart to keep it alive, she’d told Will once. “He came in yesterday and probably fled the minute he woke up since none of us has talked to him.” Kayla held up a jacket and Will stopped breathing. “John Doe* left his jacket, though, which was stupid because he almost froze to death the other day. You might have thought he’d remember to take it with him.”

That was Nico’s jacket. The leather was even ripped on one sleeve, so there was no doubt about it. Nico had been here, in the hospital since yesterday, under Kayla’s supervision and Will hadn’t seen him once? Will recalled Kayla complaining about a patient who just wouldn’t reach a normal body temperature and he almost smiled. Will knew Nico was naturally a couple degrees colder than ‘normal’ because of all the times he’d taken his pulse and might have refused to let go of his hand, and Nico’s ever-lasting _fuck you, I’m just constantly dying, like all of us._

“He’s in his early twenties, probably,” Kayla continued, “dresses like the grim reaper’s misunderstood son, and has wavy, black hair too long to be sanitary. Also very pale due to the hypothermia. We’ve given him some antibiotics for infections on his fingers because the fucker was bleeding badly and it’s a miracle he didn’t have frost bite.” Kayla was a leader, and she had the laid-back-but-still-an-authority thing from Apollo down. Apollo’s eyes were glinting with pride as he watched her.

The crowd parted to look through the hospital and Will pulled Kayla aside. She seemed dreaded. Will knew she had back-to-back surgeries today because he was in on most of them, and she _really_ didn’t want to deal with missing patients as well. Will gestured to the jacket slung over her arm. “I know him,” he whispered. Kayla opened her mouth. “ _But I don’t know his name_ ,” Will hissed. “I’ve met him several times before, so I might give his jacket back, but I don’t _know_ him.”

Kayla glared at him suspiciously. “So… you’re not more helpful than Austin, who claimed he saw him and sent him to the waiting room because ‘ _he didn’t look like a patient Kayla don’t give me that look_ ’.” She sighed and shoved Nico’s jacket into his arms. The leather felt familiar in his hands from two nights before. “Take this off my hands – I’ve got surgeries to get to. Let’s hope he doesn’t kill himself.”

-*-

Even Nico had to admit it as a fucked up idea. His hands were barely responding without pain and he couldn’t do this with without trusting his fingers. But he _had_ to. They were already looking for him, as he’d overheard snippets of conversation between the staff. He couldn’t go back in, since the floor crawled with watchful nurses. The only way was _down_. He stood on a terrace – why a hospital needed a terrace, he didn’t know. He eyed the railings and the windowsills. It was definitely _possible_. If his hands were cooperative. Which they weren’t. He snaked a leg over the railing. He guessed he’d break both arms, legs, and probably puncture a lung if he fell from this height. He would most certainly die. No one was watching him. He probably wouldn’t fall. He slipped the other leg over and faced the wall as he lowered himself. Cool wind brushed his bare arms and exposed back and he shivered. When he was two floors down, Nico regretted it, all of it. He shouldn’t have decided to climb down or he shouldn’t have tried to scrape off fucking _spray paint_ with his _fingernails_. His fingers was pulsating. Nico comforted himself with knowing it was a lot easier to climb down something, instead of up.

He halfway threw himself to the left to get a better hold and almost kicked a child. The window was open and the kid stared at Nico with big eyes. The kid muttered, ‘ _Spider-Man_ ’

Nico looked at him. Then he looked at himself. He gave the small boy an unimpressed look.

“What are you doing?” his tiny voice asked. He was about eight and sat in his bed. Superhero comics laid beside him.

Nico didn’t need this kid to tell on him. “I just _really_ don’t like the food here.” The boy nodded like that made perfect sense. “Don’t tell anyone, I just wanna get McDonalds for a change.” The boy nodded and Nico lowered himself again.

The boy leaned out his window and looked down at Nico. “Would you bring something for me too?”

“I’ll try,” Nico said. He didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep, unlike _some_ people. Finding hold on another windowsill, he paused to look at his hand. His fingers were bleeding again, and looking up, he could see a bloody trail after him. Red fingerprints clawing the beige wall. His arms were aching and the dizziness was fogging up his head. Nico looked down – he was only halfway there. He took a deep breath to steady himself and started climbing again. If he’d been Nico di Angelo from a year ago, hell, if he’d been Nico di Angelo from _yesterday_ , he’d been down fifteen minutes ago.

Up until now, Nico had been very careful not to touch the actual window glass, as he’d leave a trail visible from the inside. His foot slipped a little and his hand slapped to the window as he cornered himself against the windowsill, window, and the concrete wall. He glanced inside to make sure no one heard that.

It was a locker room with a few stray belongings littering the floor. Will Solace was standing by an open locker, shocked to a standstill as he was staring at Nico. Nico stared back. Then Will glanced at the bloody handprint on the window and darted to open it. Nico scrambled to climb down faster. He was struggling to find new foothold when his leaning surface disappeared and he was yanked inside by the hem of his shirt. Nico landed on the floor ungracefully, blood streaks and drops proving his path.

Will closed the window quickly and took Nico’s hands to examine, hissing, “ _Hypothermia?!_ ” Nico tried to get on his feet, but Will effortlessly pushed him down again. “We have the entire staff looking for you and you’re climbing down the hospital outer wall – without a _jacket_ to mention – diagnosed with _moderate hypothermia?_ ”

Nico rolled his eyes, his head still dizzy, so he might have overdone it. “I’m fine,” he claimed as his hands shook uncontrollably in Will’s. “And I have a jacket.”

Will groaned and threw, who would have known, Nico’s own jacket at him. “ _Now_ you do. Dumbass.” Will’s hands were warm and Nico really like that. The shaking was decreasing to a violent shiver. Will sighed as they sat on the floor. Nico was sure he was sitting on a pencil, but couldn’t bring himself to care. His ass was numb.

Will moved his thumbs in soft circles in Nico’s palm. This, too, felt strangely intimate and he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. Nico tried to fight the background noise of _honey and lapis_ , but it was even harder when the lapis looked at him so gently and caressed his hands – his weapon of choice, his outlet, his tools of creation – so, _so_ sweetly. Not like he was scared to break them, but as if he respected them and what they could do. Nico felt some of his stress being soothed down to a low hum instead of rapid heartbeats deafening him. The warmth thickening his veins didn’t feel so fake anymore.

“I have to go,” Nico whispered and shifted.

He hadn’t even considered the possibility that there might be other people in the room until the front door opened. Will took a sharp breath and hauled Nico after him and through another door. It closed behind him and Nico had the thrilling realization that there was no light source and the space was small.

Will found the light switch and looked around. It seemed like a typical storage of buckets and other cleaning supplies. A calendar with naked women hung on the wall next to a mop. Will whistled at the small space. “I haven’t been in a closet since high school.”

Nico rolled his eyes so far back he was going to break his neck. Will snorted. “Will, not the time.”

“Sit. On the not at all sanitary floor.” Nico did – he was too dreaded to fight. Will took a seat in front of him to dap Nico’s fingers with something that must have been _fucking salt_ because it stung like hell. “They said you don’t remember you name?”

Nico chuckled dryly. Will stared at him and his laughter died. It was such an intense look – Will was passionate about this – _this_ was Will’s passion. He cared. If Nico’s thing was burning bridges then Will’s thing was care. It was compassion. It was life and every ray of sunshine in the world. And it was so opposite of Nico’s, well, _everything_ , that he almost couldn’t blame himself for being drawn to it. He had felt so surrounded and strangled by death that how could he not want something as pure as a person living to nurture life. He wasn’t going to blame himself. Not for this one thing. He couldn’t. But he also can’t take to get the carpet ripped from his feet again. He’d had enough of that for a lifetime.

“My name,” he said, slowly, “is Nico. Not Harry or Benjamin.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t-… I never wear any kind of ID on me. I always pay in cash. Even my rent.” Will’s brows scrunched up in concern. “I can’t stay here, Will. I can’t… _be_ at hospitals for the same reason I can’t get arrested.”

“So you decided to parkour down a concrete hospital wall?” Will squeezed his hands. “We have to treat all kinds of people, it’s hospital policy. And unless you come out and claim you vandalized city property while on bed rest, it’s patient’s confidentiality.” He smiled at Nico, small and reassuring.

“You’re government officials,” Nico breathed.

Will’s smile turned uncertain. “ _I claimed the title effortless and undefeated, but it’s no glory_.” It wasn’t the first time he’d recited that quote. Will had bought it up when Nico called him a jackass, or when Nico had reminded him that he was a nurse and not a doctor.

Nico felt like he was dying and it probably wasn’t from the hypothermia. Whatever that actually was. _I can’t let him know. No one knows. Not even_ Annabeth _knows. Connor Stoll might know and I’d like to limit it to that_. Will Solace was a summer breeze that would blow past soon enough. He had to tell himself that, no matter how disappointed his sister would have been that he didn’t allow himself this one simple pleasure. Except that it wasn’t simple. It hadn’t been simple with Jason and it wouldn’t be simple with Will Solace.

Will was grinning at him and rubbing soft circles at the back of his hands.

Nothing in his life had been easy before, though. Maybe that was his thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you thought they were gonna kiss, didn't you. TOO EASY
> 
>  
> 
> ...but i promise it's soon


	9. Straight Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone yells and Nico is free

“Is Nico short for anything?” Will asked, averting his eyes to their hands.

Nico blinked. “What?”

“Is it short for anything – like, I don’t know, Nicolas or Nickleback?”

“I’m deeply offended.”

“When are you not.” Nico could hear the humour in his voice.

The tile floor was cool, and the room was quiet and heating with every minute Will spent in it. His thumbs sent small waves of warmth from Nico’s hands to his core.

He smiled at that. “It’s not short for anything. That’s all there is.”

Will smiled too. It was a certain warmth in it. Not blinding, but genuine. “I like it. It doesn’t sound anything like Harry.”

“SOLACE,” a woman shouted from the other room. The two froze up. “I’M ABOUT TO EXTRACT A TUMOUR FROM _INSIDE A MAN’S HEART_ , WHERE THE FUCK IS MY SCRUB NURSE.”

Will shot to his feet, salt covered cotton balls scrambling to the floor, then reconsidered as he looked back down at Nico. “Maybe if we stay completely still, she won’t hear us,” Will whispered with panic in his eyes.

“WILBUR,” she yelled, closer this time. Threat lingered onto every syllable.

Will shut his eyes and nearly whimpered, “Kayla, no.”

There had been some time since Nico had tried to _contain_ laughter, and he found that to be a good excuse for his poor job of doing it. “Wilbur?” he chuckled as silently as he could. Will narrowed his eyes at him and Nico tried to get it together. He rose to his feet as he got an idea. Nico flicked the calendar off the wall and shoved it into Wills hands. Then he made sure to get out of eyeshot as he opened the door and pushed a confused Will out.

“There you are, you abomination. Where the hell have you been?” Kayla accused and Nico heard her trot over to him. Will was stammering and generally making no sense. A shadow moved towards the closet door. Will’s no-sense got louder and some paper was ripped. “What’s _this_ , Will? Oh- jesus, why can’t you do that on your own time. There better be dudes in here as well, or I’m being concerned for you.” A mocking chuckle. “Scrub in, I need you there. Open heart surgery. Literally opening up his heart – _go!_ ” Footsteps fled for the door and it closed behind them.

Nico breathed. He was going to live somewhat peaceful for another day. How long does a surgery like that take? Hours, no doubt. He was considering sneaking out the same window again when-

“I know you’re there,” Kayla whispered from the other side of the wall. Nico stopped breathing. “I know you know Will. Look, I’m your doctor, I’m the one who’s been treating you and I’d like to leave you alone if I knew you’re gonna be fine, but it’s _blood_ on the floor here.” She sounded genuinely scared for his well being, if not a bit sarcastic, but he guessed doctors had to do that. Nico stepped out from the storage with his fists clenched to his sides. Kayla, a very blond, very open person by body language, regarded him.

“The wounds on my fingers reopened,” Nico said, avoiding her gaze. “That’s why there’s blood on the floor. I tripped. Will cleansed it, I think.”

Kayla nodded. “You look better – _much_ better, actually. Got some colour in your tan face and you don’t look dead anymore.”

Nico didn’t bother telling her it wasn’t a tan. He felt like thanking her for saving his life among other things, but he couldn’t move into the topic that was to follow. “You need to get to surgery,” he insisted instead, “and I need to go home.”

“Whoa, whoa, dude no, you’re not,” Kayla said, grabbing his sleeve. “You were out cold for thirty-six hours on warm-up. You’re not leaving.”

Nico grabbed the wall. “ _Thirty-six?_ ” he hissed. Leo must be out of his mind looking for him. He didn’t have his phone because he’d given it to Leo at the bar before he went outside. Then Will had arrived. Then Percy had been there. And then he’d ran and fallen asleep outside for god knows how many hours. He pushed past Kayla. “I need to go, _now_.”

She rushed after him. “I have the entire hospital looking for you! Even if I could let you go, they’ll haul your ass back to me the second they see you.”

Nico crossed his arms and glared her down. He was wasting time with this. Leo might have called the police. He glossed over his accent. “You can’t keep me here against my will, I know that much. And I’m not signing anything. I’m just going to go; pretend I was never here.” His arms were less crossed and more holding himself, now. “Please. I remember my name, but I can’t give it to you. My roommate is probably going crazy looking for me, I’ve gotta go.” He was being as honest as he could and prayed it would help him out of this.

Kayla regarded him again, his posture rather than condition this time. She pursed her lips. “Fine. I know someone who can help you, but _only_ if you give me your roommate’s phone number.” She handed him a small notepad and a pen. “I won’t have another crisis like this again, and you seem to bruise easily.” She poked his arm with the pen.

Nico took the offer and scribbled down Leo’s number although this wouldn’t happen again, he’d make sure of that. “Thank you,” he breathed. Kayla nodded and reminded him just how much of protocol she’s trespassing by doing this. As she headed out the door, he called after her, “Tell Will I’m sorry for all the trouble.”

She smiled brilliantly, a very good copy of Will’s. “He already knows that, John Doe.” Then she stepped out and left Nico in a slightly smelly locker room.

 

Kayla’s ‘person’ turned out to be someone Nico had actually seen before. In a queer bar. Lou Ellen was sort of famous in the little queer community this city could muster. Nico wasn’t a part of it, but Jason had dragged him to the city’s only space for queer adults. It didn’t really matter what you were attracted to because Lou Ellen was eye catching no matter the crowd with her wicked smile and loud laugh – sober or not. Nico had tolerated the place for approximately fifteen minutes before leaving, so he doubted Lou Ellen recognized him. Will might have mentioned her too, from the asphalt ground as Nico contributed to global warming with his spray cans.

She placed her shoulder bag on a bench by a row of lockers. She didn’t present herself. “Hi, Mr Missing. Care to tell me why the best cardio resident in this hospital needed me to bring my hair straightener here and lock the door?”

Nico touched his hair. “I am _not_ straightening any part of myself just to sneak out.”

“Same,” she replied, fishing out the iron and plugging it in. “But I don’t _need_ to sneak past a group of people looking for ‘dark, wavy hair and emo clothes’.”

Nico picked at the light blue hospital scrubs in her bag. It was going to be the cleanest set of clothes Nico has ever worn, and it haunted him.

Lou Ellen coughed. “We don’t actually have a lot of time. People are dying and I’m dying to tell their family.”

“Fine,” Nico grumbled, silently apologizing to his most Italian trait. He sat down and Lou Ellen didn’t hesitate to grip a huge chunk of his hair and starting to do her job. She was ruthless and didn’t listen to Nico’s complaints. It might have gotten the job done faster, but Nico didn’t appreciate having to be sore for the next week.

“Do you _ever_ brush your hair? Seriously, what’s this – plaster?” Her complaining drowned out his, anyway. She was effective and they were done quickly. Nico didn’t look in the mirror – he could feel his hair being longer and he hated it. It wasn’t locks of hair twisting here and there; now it was hair flowing everywhere, in some kind of formation and it felt strange and _horrible_. Lou Ellen talked him into a hairband before he changed his clothes, so he actually looked like a ‘ _sanitary medicine worker because I swear to god these people have some kinda hair code only for men_ ’. He packed his own clothes in her bag, promising to somehow get it back to her although she said it was okay.

“Take the elevator down and don’t talk to _anyone_ ,” she told him, a threatening finger hovering by his chest. “Doctors don’t actually want to talk to anyone because they’re all dead inside, so if you just hurry past them and look like you’re late for something, no one will stop you.” Nico nodded. She sighed and dropped her hand. “Don’t make me regret helping you.”

“You won’t, Lou Ellen,” Nico said and he shouldered her bag. He watched her twitch at her own name. And because he felt particularly devilish today… “I owe you. Tell Will I’ll see him later if I don’t fall over on my way home.” She stared at him. Nico smirked slightly. He didn’t want Will tangled up in _his_ life, but he wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to do the same to Will’s, since the nurse was doing exactly that to Nico anyway.

-*-

Will might have been a bit stressed. It didn’t show in the OR, because he always zoned into Doctor Mode™, but as soon as he stepped out after sterilizing the tools, he rushed towards the locker room. Lou Ellen stopped him by stepping in front of him and pulling him into their usual lunch place; a dusty office no one used in the far corner of the floor. He protested, but to no vain. Kayla was already there, not looking happy. Her ponytail was higher than usual – a look she thought made her seem strict, but actually made look like an overgrown five-year-old. Lou Ellen pushed him into his spinning chair and stood hovering over him beside Kayla.

“Today,” Kayla announced to the room; they were the only ones there, “we helped a patient with moderate hypothermia sneak out of the hospital, in _November,_ for really no good reason other than that we can’t keep him here if he doesn’t want to stay.” Will winched. This was it; this was the story of how he died. It was a short life and he kind of, maybe, really wanted to kiss the missing patient before he was murdered in cold blood, but he figured murder victims only got one last wish in the movies. Kayla caught his gaze and held it. Her posture was ice cold and it seemed ridiculous with the high ponytail.

Lou Ellen didn’t look at him. “I can’t believe you have a felony boyfriend and didn’t tell me,” she mumbled. She seemed honestly offended.

Kayla’s eyes didn’t waver. “I can’t believe you found my sick patient, who had _open wounds_ , Will, and your first instinct was to have a good time in the dirty- _filthy_ broom closet with him.”

Lou Ellen huffed. “He’s grumpy and complaining, maybe on drugs, his clothes were ripped and he needed a shower.”

Will didn’t interrupt them. Sometimes it did more harm than good.

“He is _sick_. Someone found him sleeping outside in a parking lot two days ago. He didn’t wear an ID and no one came to claim him. He could be homeless.”

“He’s creepy. He knew my name and I’ve never talked to him before.” Lou Ellen shuddered. “He’s got my bag? I need that back.”

Kayla threw her arms out in exaggeration. “He refused treatment the minute he could!”

Lou Ellen sighed and looked at Will a more gently. “And he’s perfect for you.”

“Yeah,” Kayla agreed absentmindedly, staring out the office window. “But don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again, Solace. I don’t care if he’s the prince of fucking Denmark; he is to be returned to his bed.”

Will wasn’t on death roll, thank god. The tension in his shoulders eased. He’d only been nodding along so far and he knew it wasn’t in his place to ask, but he _had_ to; “Why did you help him?”

Kayla made a face. She took a minute before answering. “He needed me to. I’m his doctor, and if he insists that the best thing for him is to pretend he was never here, then I’m gonna do just that.” A smile flashed across her face. “But I _did_ get a number to call if he landed himself here again, so it’s something.”

Lou Ellen shrugged. “As for me… he needed me to. I didn’t know you knew each other – although I might have been friendlier towards him then – but Kayla said to help him, so I did. He looked ridiculous with straight hair, though.”  She snickered and fist bumped Kayla.

Will squinted at them. “What did you do.”

Lou Ellen dismissed him with a wave. “He said to tell you he’ll see you later if he didn’t fall down a ditch or something.” She pointed an accusing finger at him. “ _You_ get my bag back. I need it for tennis”

Kayla sighed and sat down on the desk. Her shoulders hunched in worry. “I think he’s going to be fine, but I’m worried about the reports and _files_. He’s still ‘missing’ and we can’t actually erase his stay here since I called a hospital wide search.”

“We can call it a false alarm? Like an exercise?” Lou Ellen suggested, but Kayla shot it down saying the higher ups must have been consulted first.

Will got to his feet. “Let’s just… see what happens. Things like this blows past after some time.”

Kayla shook her head. “We have his labs, Will.” She looked right at him. “We can have his identity with a few calls.” She pulled a chart from inside the desk and gave it to him. Will just stared at it. “He’s allergic to bees, got some rough scars on his limbs, and you won’t believe the many concussions he must have had because his MRI was off the charts with old and untreated skull fractures.” Will touched the plastic surface of the chart. He didn’t open it. “No drugs, Lou. He’s had some stitches on his back and arms, but it didn’t look professional at all. You should have seen it, looked like a wolf claw marks, from his shoulder to elbow.”

Will shook his head slightly. “No.”

Kayla shuffled closer. “I’m only telling you because we need someone to send the bills to.”

“ _No_ ,” he repeated. “He doesn’t want that.”

Lou Ellen shifted. “Don’t _you_ want that? To know his name? And no one _wants_ bills, Will.”

Will shook his head. “What I want doesn’t matter, Lou. Just… let me think about it. I’ll come up with something.” He got to his feet and paced the room a few times. They watched him.

Kayla held her hands up in surrender. “Fine. I got surgery any time soon, so you go prep the patient, Will.”

“Fine,” he said as he went for door, happy to have something to do.

-*-

The fake warmth was wearing off when he reached his apartment. Nico staggered into 7 to find Leo sit strangely calm by his _something_. He was staring intensely at it as he croaked, “ _Hola, hombre_. ‘Sup?” Leo sat completely still. Which was impossible.

Nico was hit with the sudden realization that Leo hadn’t known he was gone. He froze in the door.

Leo glanced up at him, lips a thin line. Then he stared. “Dude, what’s up with the get-up? And your _hair?_ ”

Nico slammed the door, suddenly frustrated. “I’ve been emitted to _the hospital_ for two days and you didn’t look for me?! I had to dress up as a nurse to get out!”

Leo un-froze and jumped to his feet. “ _You_ went to a hospital? Voluntarily? But when you got those fucked up flesh wounds on your arm, you refused.”

Nico dropped the bag from his shoulder and yanked off his scrub shirt. He growled, “You didn’t even know I never got home! Where have you been?”

Leo squirmed helping Nico get clean clothes. “I crashed at Jason’s.”

“ _Per due giorni?_ ” Nico accused. _For two days?_

“Hey, we hang out.” Leo’s voice shook. He handed Nico a forest green V-neck. Nico accepted it only because the hospital had felt the need to drug him back to warmth.

“What’s hypothermia?” Nico asked, to change the subject.

Leo raised his eyebrows at him. Nico gestured vaguely to his body. “It means you’re cold and grounded to bed rest,” Leo answered, more steadily. “With warm drinks. We don’t want another The Match Girl story.”

Nico just shook his head and headed over to 6. “I’m taking wannabe because I’m sick, _sì?_ ” He didn’t wait for a reply. Leo was obviously occupied with something that Nico would care about it in the morning when he had the capacity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this feels like such a filler chapter, and I hate it, and it's barely 2.5k, but the next one is 5.1K to make up for it
> 
> College has started up again, so I might not get to update as regularly as I want to. I still hope you'll stick around for when I DO update, though
> 
> And I keep forgetting to mention: the word 'queer' is a slur, if you didn't know. Don't use it if it doesn't apply to you, like I'm using it because I'm a lesbian and it's okay. Just keep that in mind, and since both POVs are queer we won't get a setting were I can demonstrate it, so..


	10. Shattered Drinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hyperthermia is actually a thing and maybe everyone is happy ?

It felt strange to walk by the wall at 3am _again_ without having a brooding shadow of a person ruining his own lungs beside it. Will hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d gotten to it. He’d be there when Will went to work and he’d be there when Will went home. His route home that used to be so fascinating with all the graffiti was now a dull path. He understood why Nico wasn’t there, because he was sick, and Will was all about health and safety for others, as mentioned, but he _missed_ Nico. An ridiculous amount, actually. He wanted to be snapped at with lightning quick remarks and getting a steady stream of insults, he wanted to see Nico’s intense focus when he paints and the scrunch his nose does when he refuse to smile.

And it was ridiculous because he was interested in a person who was barely a person. Leo and Jason had grilled him about how much he knew about Nico when they had seen them talk. Will hadn’t said much because there wasn’t much to tell.

He’d barely started his shift by picking up 5 charts at central when someone called on him from the front doors. Leo sprinted up to him, at least he tried, but stopped half a dozen times for passing patients. Will began to understand why Nico didn’t give out his name lightly. Leo finally caught up to him as Will went inside a patient’s room.

Leo followed, much to Will’s confusion. “I need you. For a consult, or whatever.”

Will skimmed through the details on a chart before hooking it to a bed with an elderly man in. “You need a consult from a _nurse?_ Also, you can’t be in here, this is someone’s room.”

Leo looked around as if he just noticed this. “Gotcha,” he said and went to wait outside.

The elderly man raised his brows at Will, making his wrinkles more prominent, and Will only shrugged. He finished up with the charts and met Leo outside. “Hi, by the way. How’s your wrist?”

“Same as last time you asked,” Leo said. “It’s fine.”

Will said, “Well, you were borderline drunk by then. You also called me ‘sun flower’, so.”

Leo rolled his eyes, a trait he must have gotten from Nico. “That lousy son of a bitch you sent home from here?” Leo asked. Will staggered in his tracks. “He’s been a pain in the ass. I get that _I_ was the one who grounded him, but is he well enough to get back to work? He’s been bitching about it for days, so I dragged him here, but he refuse, unsurprisingly, to go inside.” Leo pointed to the entrance and Will followed him.

The cold bit Will where his scrubs didn’t cover and he felt his throat and cheeks flush. It hadn’t snowed yet, but the constant humid weather here made the roads a field of constant danger. Leo could by some miracle run across an ice patch without even thinking about slipping. Will sneaked across it like any other sane person.

“Leo, I swear to god, I don’t need this,” Nico grumbled by the sidewall. He was packed and covered in layers of jackets and scarfs. It was an odd sight, although it shouldn’t be since Will mostly saw him covered head to toe. But here, he was covered for the cold, not for recognition.

Will couldn’t help it. He arched over laughing. Nico looked like an oversized toddler waddling through snow. Nico only glared at Leo.

Leo held his hands up in surrender. “ _Estás enferma_. When you’re a parent, _comprenderás_.”

“Do I have to remind you who makes you eat your vegetables,” Nico countered. He was unimpressed and it wasn’t a question.

Leo crossed his arms. “I brought the doctor. That’s what mothers do.” Leo turned to Will. His laughter had died down. “Wait, did you say you’re a nurse? They let a _nurse_ fix my wrist?”

“And the discrimination continues,” Will muttered under his breath. “Yes, fastening a splint with bandages is a very invasive procedure. It’s absolutely outrageous.”

“I liked you better when you were too polite to be sarcastic,” Leo said.

Will said, “They all do. Except Nico.”

Nico snorted. “Fuck you.”

“You’re a giant, sick marshmallow, you don’t get an opinion.” Will straightened. “Now strip so I can take your temp.”

Nico proclaimed an accusing ‘HAH’ at Leo before slipping off three layers of jackets and two layers of gloves. Will eyed Leo, who mumbled ‘ _he was cold, alright_ ’. Will took Nico’s hand in his. This wasn’t really how you checked temperatures, at all, but it was how Will liked to check Nico’s temperature. Also his pulse. He wasn’t cold, that was for sure. He mentioned to Leo that packing Nico in like this was cheating, but he only got a huff in response. His temperature was normal compared to Will’s, which meant he was warmer than average. He did the standard eye procedure to check for brain damage, but considering Nico had climbed a building wall with almost no foothold, it wasn’t really needed. He still held Nico’s hand. This was a thing they did; both pretended they’ve forgotten about it.

“Everything looks fine, but I would lose the eight jackets. Hyperthermia is also a thing, Leo,” Will said.

Leo said, “I know what hypothermia is. He has it.” Nico looked like he was ready for death.

Will turned to Leo. “No, hy- _per_ -thermia. Overheating due to being exposed to too much warmth.”

Leo chuckled. “That’s not a thing.” His playful smile dropped. “Wait, it is? Nico, get the hell outta those.” He launched himself at his roommate to help get him out of the clothes. They exchanged mumbles in Spanish and Will realized Nico knew Spanish. Maybe. His accent was off and Will wasn’t bilingual. He wasn’t bi-anything, apparently.

“You haven’t experienced any pain or discomfort?” Will asked, standardized. This was probably the most civil conversation he’d had with Nico, ever.

Nico stretched. “My ass has been numb, but nothing else.”

“And I didn’t even touch it. Huh.” Will liked to think he didn’t enjoy his own jokes more than his audience, but that’s a lie. Nico glared at him.

“Take it easy at work and if you feel like you’re going into relapse, find me,” Will instructed. “I highly doubt it, though.”

“Finally,” Nico breathed. “I’m letting Annabeth know I’m coming it. We got two huge bachelor parties booked for tonight and we need all hands on deck since it’s gonna get swamped.” Nico bent down to look for something.

Will leaned towards Leo. “Did he hear a word of what I just said?”

“Don’t take it personally – he’s just restless.” Leo patted Will’s back. “Nico’s always been on the move. Not necessarily moving from house to house, but he needs something to do, something to keep his mind occupied. He can’t sit put, and the fact that he’s done that for three days straight? I’m impressed.”

“ _Dove hai fatto di cibo,_ Leo?” Nico grumbled, tipping a mountain of clothes over. He was left wearing a green sweater now – the most colour Will had ever seen on him.

“Plastic bag by the wall, genius.” Leo rolled his eyes. Will understood nothing.

“Aha,” Nico said as he brought it back to them. He shoved it into Will’s chest. He shot Nico a questionable look. Nico sighed. “There’s a kid on the seventh floor who reads tons of superhero comics.”

“Victor?” Will asked. He’d stopped by a few times with Lou Ellen. The kid had an inoperable brain tumor that caused him to have seizures every now and then; hence why he wasn’t discharged yet. “I was raised on med books, so I can’t really contribute to his Marvel obsession, but he’s a nice kid.”

“Yeah, um, when I climbed past him, I kind of promised him I’d try to sneak him some fast food, but I need you to deliver it. For obvious reasons.” Nico crossed his arms.

“Nico, your thing blew past ages ago,” Will told him. “People run away from the ER all the time. We only called a search for you because you had been admitted into the surgical floor. Like, what if you were poking yourself with a scalpel? We stopped looking for you when we realize you weren’t in the building anymore.”

Nico’s shoulders dropped and he seemed more at ease. “I’m still not going in there. I don’t need them to have more records of my face.”

Leo rolled his eyes. “Yeah, we _get it_. You paint on walls. No one’s gonna arrest you for that.”

“And we don’t have security cameras here. Patient’s confidentiality,” Will added.

Nico’s expression darkened. “There’s always cameras, Will. You really think the higher ups let you save lives unsupervised?” Nico tempted. “No, they don’t.”

Nico seemed to have given this more thought than Will had ever cared to do. Having people in position of power watching him doing completely legal work didn’t scare him as he had nothing to be afraid of. It was a creepy thought, though. Like he wasn’t being trusted. But nothing he couldn’t live with.

Will braced the McDonalds plastic bag. “I know you’re just making excuses, but I’ll get this to Victor after rounds, anyway. He’s been stuck here for a few months now, so it’s nice of you to make it a little easier on him.” Will smiled at Nico’s bothered stance.

Nico eyes were glued to the ground as if it whispered all his secrets. “Yeah, well – I’m just keeping a promise.”

They left with that, Leo sending Will a wink over his shoulder as he cradled the clothes in his arms and huddled away after Nico. It struck Will how different Nico looked in sunlight. His skin absorbed it and he seemed more alive. His hair had a reddish-brown shade hidden in the night, but very illuminating in sunlight. The last shred of supernatural that hung around Nico faded and he suddenly seemed very real and present. He was arguing with Leo about carrying some of the jackets as they walked off, skidding on the icy ground and threatening to fall. He caught himself on a light post and Leo cackled. Will saw how _actual_ he was for the first time and he thought he might just pull this off.

-*-

Drew wasn’t simmering as much a glowering tonight. She liked her job, Nico thought, but it strained her some times more than others. This was originally her night off, and even though it was all hands on deck, she was still supposed to get the night off because Piper was the on-call extra. Piper had begged Annabeth to ask Drew instead because she was going out to celebrate tonight and Annabeth gave in. Both because she owed Piper, and because they were all a little in love with her. They could have called Travis Stoll from the back office, but god knows what kind of weird drinks he would make if he had the material. He was benched from the bar for a reason. Annabeth was unfocused and kept stacking and restacking the glasses with glazed eyes. Nico realized she’d been like this for at least the last four shifts while he had been too distracted by the wall and _other_ to notice. He wanted to ask about it, but Drew kept ordering him around before he got the chance.

“Just let her work it out like the machine she is,” Drew whispered. Or spoke normally through the music. “We probably can’t do anything, anyway.”

She expected him to just dismiss his friend’s strange behavior and act like it wasn’t important. Which, in fact, worked out easily since he was a master at just that.

Piper walked in with Leo a few hours in, ordering drinks from Drew who refused to serve her bar-team-mate in childish protest, saying she was justified because of the betrayal. Annabeth had picked up her pace and was now taking orders at lightning speed, as if she could work away her problems. She took Piper’s order as Leo told Nico they had to wait for Jason before Piper could have her big reveal.

“ _Ella se niega a decirme_ ,” Leo muttered to Nico across the counter. _She refuses to tell me_.

Nico replied, “ _Si rifiuta di dire a nessuno, idiota._ ” _She refuses to tell anyone._

Piper shot in, in French, “ _Il est pas un idiot_ ,” having caught a few words she knew. “Leo’s actually not been an annoying ass about it yet.”

“That’s promising,” Nico said and Leo smacked his shoulder. “Not in English, at least.”

The first bachelor party started pouring in and Nico left Leo and Piper to their own devices. They made a first round of a dozen Old Fashions and when Nico put the tray down on the shoved-together tables, the buzzed fifty year olds started to chuckle and tell him all about marrying so late in life. He managed to excuse himself when he saw people started to surround the bar counter as if it was a waterhole in the desert.

Nico didn’t particularly _like_ bartending. He didn’t like to be ordered around, or serve people in general. His off-setting presence helped, though. No one bugged him unless they felt like they had to, like for a drink, so he escaped awkward small talk. Working with Annabeth helped too, which had been a factor to why he’d gotten the job I the first place. Nico wasn’t a people person.

Leo was clutching his drink desperately when Nico passed him. “Pipes, it’s midnight; you’d think Jason would be done with whatever by now.” He basically pleaded her. “Just tell us, I’m dying.”

“We’re all dying, actually,” Nico said, bringing them a couple of beers. “Just very slowly. Oxygen might be toxic; we don’t know.”

Piper scoffed. “Aren’t you a ray of sunshine today.”

“If one kind of whale can live for hundreds of years in the sea, why can’t we do the same on land? Because oxygen is killing us.” Nico filled their scotch glasses. Leo liked to have options to drink, and Piper drank whatever she got.

“Nico.” Leo was unimpressed. “Whales breathe air.”

Piper said, “I thought of out all of us, you were the one who watched the most Animal Planet.”

Leo continued, “And even if they didn’t, there’s still oxygen in water?”

Nico breathed, “Oh, my god.” He blamed the poor, American, high school science curriculum – unfairly, but Nico didn’t see it that way.

Jason walked up to them by then, exchanging uneasy glances with Leo, and Nico convinced himself he didn't want to dig his own grave by asking about it. He pecked Piper’s cheek and sat down next to Leo. Drew got him a beer and grilled him out for being late.

“Spill,” Leo said, looking at Piper. ”We’re all here, no more secrets.”

Piper grinned, knocked back her scotch, and proclaimed, “I’m getting my own radio show.”

“Oh, my god,” Jason exclaimed, getting up to hug his girlfriend.

“Congratulations,” Drew, Annabeth and Nico said, respectfully.

“Does that mean people don’t have to see your face?” Leo wondered and Piper shoved him off his bar stool.

Piper was _glowing_. “I’m gonna name it _Average Quotable_ , for obvious reasons. Shortened to _A.Q._ as a reference to IQ because I’m spreading my wisdom to the weak-minded.”

“Yes, you are,” Jason said. “This is awesome!”

Leo snickered. “ _Estoy pretendiendo decir algo de mierda ahora_ ,” he told Nico. _I’m pretending to say some shit right now._

Nico smiled smugly at that. He filled Leo’s scotch glass. “ _Poi credo che dovrei contribuire_.” Annabeth glared. _Then I guess I should contribute._

Piper narrowed her eyes at them. “You two stop that.”

Leo smirked. “ _¿Por qué?_ ”

“Because fuck you, that’s why,” Piper stated. “Also, this is _my night_. No talking about me behind my back – or right in front of me in Latin.”

Leo groaned. Nico sighed. Annabeth disappeared to the register to take orders and Drew asked questions about Piper’s news and pretended not to care, studying her nails as they spoke. She had been a not-so-secret fan of Piper’s videos for a while, but she shot down any indication of her admiration. Leo started bugging Nico about how he knew Will – Nico had dreaded the conversation. Leo must feel like he’d waited a respectable amount of hours to ask.

Nico crossed his arms. “We’ve bumped into each other several times on our way home from work,” he said off-hand. That was the explanation he’d practiced.

Leo squinted at him. “We live nowhere near the hospital.”

Nico’s palms were sweating. “My work is.”

His eyes didn’t waver. “Work or _work?_ ”

Nico rolled his eyes and dropped his arms. “ _Le cose non legali_ ,” he whispered. _The not legal stuff._ He knew _illegal_ was understandable in every language.

A knowing smile crept onto Leo’s face. “He’s a real pretty-boy, di Angelo. _Justo en su carril._ ” Nico sighed. Leo dismissed him with a wave. “And he’s a doctor! That could come in handy, you know.”

Nico snagged Leo’s empty glass and gave him a beer. “I’m _not_ gonna make a move so I get a private doctor, you fuckward,” Nico stated. “And he’s a nurse.”

“Nico’s crushing on a nurse?” Piper injected. Leo nodded like he approved of this. “He always falls for the good guys.” Piper shrugged. “A guy who saves people’s lives this time; that’s the dream,” she mused.

Jason scoffed. “I save lives.” Whether he was defending his past relationship to Nico or his current one to Piper, was hard to tell.

“Do you?” Nico asked sceptically. “Really?”

Jason sighed. “I enforce the law, Nico – of course I do.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m not staying for this.” He left them as Drew claimed she knew who Will was, which she probably did if he remembered his episode a couple weeks back.

The second bachelor party arrived and Nico cursed Connor’s suggestion to extend their closing time if they had enough customers on Fridays. And while he was at it, he cursed Travis’s experimental blue beer, custom made for Percy. Just because he could. Music boomed louder and he briefly considered earplugs when Annabeth’s tray of drinks started shaking in her hands. He wouldn’t have seen it if he hadn’t leaned over for the washcloth, but he couldn’t un-see it. The noise of clattering glass got numbed out by the bass. Annabeth buckled over. Nico managed to catch her tray in time and sat it on the low counter, out of view. She clutched the edges til her fingers turned white. Her arms rustled like leaves and her curls followed suit.

Nico didn’t make a scene out of it. He signalled Drew to take the register for now as he slowly pried Annabeth’s hands off the wood. He didn’t look at her face before he had guided her down in the couch inside the break room. Her eyes were spent wide and she was sweating down her neck. Her shaking didn’t subside. She didn’t seem scared or panicked, but her posture was tenser than ever. Annabeth Chase was overwhelmed.

Realization washed over Nico and a short sigh escaped him. “Go home, Annabeth, we got it here. Did Percy let you go to work like this?” Nico had seen Annabeth stressed out and overworked, but nothing like this.

Annabeth shook her head and took a raspy breath. “He won’t talk to me. Or he _talks_ to me, but he’s been coming home early in the mornings all beaten up and refusing to talk to me about _that_.”

“ _What?_ ” Nico hissed. Percy would never hurt any living people. He was too kind-hearted for that.

Annabeth held herself, a gesture that made her seem smaller than Nico had ever seen her. “I’m in my sixth year, I… I’m about to graduate and finally get my degree. But, Nico, architecture…” she whispered, as if in pain, “it’s _hard_. And they don’t go easy on me now that I’m almost there and I’m juggling work and school, homework and Percy’s unexpressed problems, my final essay and…”

Annabeth wasn’t a person who cried easily. She didn’t cry now either, but her breath hitched. She looked up at Nico. He patted her leg reassuringly, not quite sure what else to do. She held herself more tightly. “You always promise me you’ll step in when I’m in over my head – Nico, this is it. Now. I need you to do this for me because I just _can’t_.”

Nico was mentally at war with himself for not stepping in earlier. He had seen her not being herself, but he’d chosen to ignore it because ‘ _Annabeth Chase can do anything’_ as if she wasn’t every bit as human as he was. Nico had a bad habit of walking away from difficult social situations. He was still ignoring Leo’s uneasiness; convincing himself it’s nothing until it blows up in his face just like Annabeth’s situation had just done.

She grasped his arm, like a lifeline. “He proposed to me this summer,” she whispered like a borrowed secret. “And… I didn’t tell you because Percy Jackson is your second to least favourite subject.”

The wars in Nico’s head raged on with even more force, guilt adding nuclear power to guns.

Annabeth squeezed his arm, catching his eyes with her intense grey ones. “Percy is killing himself because of all the blood you’ve unrightfully placed in his hands. He might not think he’s killing himself, but whatever stupid shit he’s up to will get him into serious trouble if you don’t talk to him. Nico, I need you to _talk to him_.” She refused to let him go as she stared him down. An earthquake couldn’t have scared him more than Annabeth did in this moment. Her stare was like a marriage commitment. You couldn’t break it without submitting yourself to eternal hell pain. “I need you to go out there and be a fucking bartender and I need you to talk to him. Sometime. It doesn’t have to be now.”

Nico stared at her. He inhaled a shaky breath.

Her expression softened a little. “You can’t blame him for the world when he isn’t at fault. Let him off the hook. It doesn’t mean anything to him if I say it – it has to be you.”

A fire burned inside of him, warming him at his very core. Annabeth, along with all their friends, had been tiptoeing around him for months and he was sick of it. Annabeth needed him to have a real conversation with her best friend because she’s so scared for his guilt blinded actions. Who was Nico to refuse his friends anything. If he would kill a man for Annabeth Chase, then he could at least try to leave Percy with good conscience for once. Even if he wasn’t ready to mean it, he would try, for her. Because she had always had his back and didn’t push him into getting back into his old tracks after Bianca’s death. But this time he wasn’t the victim in the situation, and Percy needed him too.

He left her there to gather herself as he got back to work. Drew was _this close_ to screaming at him when he finally got back to help her out. As he cleaned up and started pouring the new orders, he glanced over to the corner. Leo was building a construction out of their toothpicks, Jason watched with honest interest as Leo explained something about it, and Piper had her head popped up on her elbow, smiling warmly at them. Nico knew Percy and Annabeth before he knew the trio, but it was clear they shared an unique connection no one else was in on. He kind of envied that.

Nico spent a good half hour cleaning up a grooms’ vomit. Clarisse cackled by the door and generally wasn’t helping. He hailed a cab for Leo to makes sure he got home safe. Jason followed Piper home. The air thickened as it got later and the bodies danced closer to a really outdated light show. People shared drinks and eyes was glazed, movements slower and drinks dropped to the floor. It got sticker to walk and Nico honestly didn’t know how no one had fallen over yet.

Travis, the manager for the day, called it around 5 in the morning and they finally, _finally_ rounded up the people to leave. The image of cattle flashed before Nico and his exhausted self slipped into giggles. He half leaned, half slept on his broom until Drew smacked the back of his head and Annabeth chuckled from mopping the small dance floor/scene. Clarisse placed stools on tables in hyper-speed so she could go home to her terrier – forgetting she had to help the rest out if she finished early. Drew mumbled the lyrics to _This Song Saved My Life_ by Simple Plan streaming out of their speakers as she cleaned off the tables. Nico joined in, and Drew smiled at him. Clarisse aggressively mumbled the lyrics because she’d heard the song before, but didn’t know the words. Annabeth wore the same warm smile Piper had worn.

Travis gave them the numbers of the night and they left in silence. Clarisse smacked Nico’s back in goodbye and Annabeth nodded to him. Drew had already fled the scene – she had class in five hours.

Nico shouldered his backpack, hearing muffled, metallic clinks, and headed to finish his piece. Nico’s legs, however, was not going to Westfort. He traced the cool buildings he passed with his fingers. A siren wailed in the far distance, the sound carried in the streets. Few of the light posts were out by the shore, but one flickered, illuminating Percy’s form in snippets of light.

Percy sat on a dark, mold green bench where solid land met the shoreline. Nico had been here several times in the summer, but it wasn’t very popular in the budding winter. Percy looked beaten. Not beaten up, but beaten by the world.

Nico sat down next to him and Percy winched by the sight of him. “How’d you-“

“I know you,” Nico cut off. His voice was honest. He needed Percy to believe him and as much as he hated it, Percy knew him too, and would know if he lied. Nico didn’t meet his eyes and he had a feeling Percy avoided his as well. They had been friends for years and this was their longest… break? Was this a thing that passed? Nico shook his head. “You wanted to talk the other night and I blew up at you. I’m sorry about that, I just wasn’t prepared to talk about it.”

Percy sighed heavily. Nico noted he didn’t smell of alcohol, thank god. “It’s kinda hard to warn you when you ignore me.” He chuckled a little at that, testing the boundaries.

Nico let a small smile slip. “And that’s my doing.” He didn’t say _fault_ because he was still convinced he was right to want space. “I think you… should start. I don’t think I can.”

Percy surprised him. “I was in a hostage situation in February. Did Annabeth tell you?” He glanced at Nico.

“You have the worst luck,” Nico muttered under his breath. He rested his forearms on his thighs. “No, she didn’t.”

“We were a group of random people who all happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Percy started. He sounded tired. “When we eventually could evacuate, I stepped up with another guy to make sure everyone got out safe. I asked him to clear the second floor and a bomb went off while he was up there. The rest of us were already out, but he died. And a couple others.” Percy spoke surely of this, because he had been present in this situation – not been accused of killing anyone afterwards. Nico bet he must have gone over the situation a thousand times in his head, trying to find out if he could have avoided it.

Percy ran his hands through his hair. “Thing is – that actually _was_ my fault. And after I realized that I couldn’t do anything about it, but I could try and do something with you, my mind was set.” Percy huffed. “I miss you, man. A lot.”

Nico kept quiet. His mind was raging and he didn’t trust himself to speak.

Percy leaned back onto the bench, shoulders hunched. “I know Bianca would still be alive if I hadn’t _helped_ her make her _dream_ come true, Nico, but she wanted it. I know she would still stop by every month to check up on you, and I know you’d block yourselves in her house watching the first two _Scream_ movies on Halloween last week if I hadn’t written that letter.” He sighed. “I beat myself up for it every day because I stole that from you. And it’s not like I can make up for it. I can’t watch _Scream_ with you and it would be the same.”

Nico didn’t know he cried until something dripped on his hands, but he knew it wasn’t raining. He brought his sleeve up to wipe away the snot. He’d guessed Percy had thought about Bianca, but he hadn’t thought Percy would think about the life experiences he’d stolen from Nico. A sarcastic ‘ _heh_ ’ escaped him. “The whole situation is actually very confusing to me,” Nico admitted, earning a curious look from Percy. “I’m against our military committing genocide in Afghanistan, since it’s not even a threat to us anymore. I’m angry that she went there in the first place, I’m angry that the officials actually let her when she had so little experience. I’m angry that U.S. make money of this war – of her murder – but I’m also cursing the country whose soldier killed her. I’m hating that this unnecessary war cost Bianca her life.”

Percy nodded. “They shouldn’t have let her go.”

“Don’t belittle her,” Nico snapped, more harshly than he meant to. “Bianca was talented and passionate. She was the best soldier, but she didn’t give her life for something she believed in – it was wrongfully taken from her. Still, she went to protect her people, to protect _me_.” Nico leaned back too. He sighed. The constant but distant screaming in his head exhausted him. “I just can’t help thinking she would still fucking be here if it wasn’t a war to be fought. And I’m confused because I want to honour her hopes and dreams, but when her hopes and dreams _killed_ her, Percy. I don’t know what to do… or think.”

Nico stared at the flickering water surface. Percy strategically patted Nico’s knee. “You can’t fight the world, bro. It refuses to get better.”

Nico sighed heavier. “That’s probably why I fight you instead.” He bowed his head down. Freezing cold winds rustled through them, fighting to break free from the narrow building maze behind them. “It’s not your fault,” Nico admitted and he felt himself believing it. “Her death is not on you – hundreds of factors led up to it, but you were the only one I could blame because she wouldn’t listen to me when I said she shouldn’t go.” He turned to find Percy already watching him. “It was just something she _had_ to do, and however I feel about it doesn’t matter…” Nico trailed off. His thoughts formed anew as he realized something crucial, something so elementary to him he felt downright stupid for not seeing it before.

Her wall, the one Nico had silently dedicated to her, poured all his grief into – his biggest piece since she passed away – it wasn’t even for her. It had been a project Nico needed to work out his feelings. It wasn’t a symbol for Bianca. He had made it for himself. This was the one thing he’d made for himself that was private, yet public. It felt like fog cleared from his head. His thoughts were clearer and he knew exactly what to do. For once, there wasn’t an ounce of doubt in him.

He shot to his feet. Percy exclaimed a small _whoa_. Nico felt the anticipation power through him. “I need to go,” he said whipping around to face Percy, who repeated his first exclamation. “It’s not your fault, none of it is,” Nico hurriedly said. “Not even the explosion, so don’t beat yourself up about it.” He found it surprisingly easy to give Percy an honest smile. “ _I_ _forgive you_.” Then he spun around and sprinted to Westfort Road.

His mind was lighter than ever before. It felt refreshing, like stepping out from a sauna. He heard his joyous laughter echo through the blocks. He wanted to exist in this feeling, this high, of knowing – without a second thought – that he could do something and nothing would go wrong –

The feeling that, for once, his life went easy on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're closing in!!!!! on a very important!!!!! point in the story!!!!! I'm excited
> 
> honestly, my taste in music is so different from Nico's, im a literal Will Solace, so it's hard to find music Nico would think is 'okay' enough to not despise. Nico is "Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence trash-fan, i will fight you on this


	11. Colour Splattered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico is happy for a whole chapter this time. enjoy it while it lasts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Sorry this one took so long. I've been dealing with a lot of personal issues and although writing might help with that - I planned on this chapter to be light and happy, so I had to wait with writing it until I was out of that bad patch.  
> Thanks for sticking with me, I hope you like it!

Nico was testing his limits and he knew it. He’d banished his jacket, which was a dare in itself, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. He needed his bare arms to mix paint on. He had a gut feeling, a wonderful one, that whether he stayed here for another half hour wouldn’t matter because he wouldn’t get caught. He trusted his gut for the thought of it made him not as burdened. Brush strokes covered his left arm in different grey shades along with brown and green. It was mushed in some places and clean colours in other. The skin was sore where he had furiously twisted the brush to gather paint. In two minutes, the paint would dry and crack up when he moved his wrist. Artists used cardboard or plastic plates for the same purpose, but Nico lost things like that. He usually didn’t lose an arm.

He stepped back, out of breath and with a stupidly wide grin plastered onto his face. He was done. He’d added the last bit to make it feel like _his_ wall and not Bianca’s. His pieces were never hard to interpret, but he didn’t want them to be bold either. He’d used huge letter chambers to form Grey-13 coloured words hanging, seemingly heavily because of the dark shadows, over the small boy’s face. The piece itself was the size of the front of a car. Art rarely turned out exactly the way we want it to, maybe one in a million, but this was Nico’s one. He’d done it so perfectly he couldn’t look directly at his piece for longer than a couple seconds. Dark eyes spotted forest green and murky brown, shadowed by angry brows and face tipped like he was sprinting forward to hurt you. Nico averted his eyes. It was _intense_. The boy was so small and already had so much fury in his eyes. The text above whispered a secret in bold writing; “ _the ghost of survivor’s guilt could be so unkind_ ”.

Nico didn’t _use_ colours; he found it unnecessary and distracting in a world that saw everything as pure black and white. But he’d done it for this. Because Bianca’s death tattered him with all kinds of shades and patches, forcing him to face that he didn’t have steady ground on one topic… and that is okay. Allowing him to be confused about her death and not hate himself for it. The small splatter of colours in those intense eyes was a change, a healing process, and he liked it.

It was done. 

He checked the time. It was already seven. He swiped his hand over the right arm to check for wet paint before putting his jacket back on. The paint felt like a skin-tight suit under the silk of his jacket arm. Getting the rappelling equipment in his bag was the biggest challenge. Lou Ellen’s tennis equipment took up some space. The early morning light brewed in the far sky as he stepped out of the parking lot. Cloud bellies blushed and sunshine slowly washed over the night sky. Nico turned to find _Survivor’s Guilt_ illuminated. Nico had chosen that wall specifically. It was hidden, but still got the first light of the day – making it a closed off display.

Footsteps walked up to him and didn’t even need to turn to know who it was. “It’s strange seeing you in sunlight, you know,” Will said. Nico half wondered when he got so accustomed to Will’s steps. The sound carried differently in the open space, not echoed like in the parking lot. He wore freakishly orange sneakers and warm jogging clothes tattered green and blue.

Nico looked him up and down again. “You _jog?_ ” Nico accused, his thoughts temporarily jacked up by the sight of Will’s unruly honey hair. “Why would you put your body through that?”

Will rolled his eyes at him, something he hadn’t done three weeks ago. “I’m a health care worker. I kinda got to follow my own advice if I tell patients to exercise and eat healthy.”

Nico scoffed. He did his math quickly. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping? You got home like, what, three hours ago?”

Will nodded sheepishly and pocketed his hands. “Yeah, but I can’t sleep when the sun’s up. I only worked half a shift so I didn’t care to nap at work either.”

“If we’re talking about health, you should get a normal sleep schedule,” Nico suggested, or ordered. Depended on who was listening.

Will raised his eyebrows at Nico. An accusation.

“Oh, shut up,” Nico grumbled.

Will took a mocking step closer. “I’m guessing you haven’t slept since I last saw you, either.”

Nico said, “Shut _up_ , I’m allergic to the sun.”

“You’re allergic to bees,” Will countered. Nico’s demeanour dropped. He hadn’t told Will that. At least he thought he hadn’t. Nico stepped back. Will hurried to explain himself, “No, no – it was in your labs. We ran your blood to make sure we could use medication on you and Kayla told me.”

Nico didn’t quite know what to say. He shuffled his feet. A knot tangled in his gut and twisted uncomfortably. “Did you find anything else?”

Will’s shoulders shook with his chuckle and Nico squashed the excitement in him. “Walk with me,” he said, and Nico did. The early morning smelled humid and new as they paced through empty streets. Will shrugged. “You probably feel sick after eating citrus fruits like oranges or lemon, ‘cause your body can’t really stand that stuff.”

Nico nodded because it was true. He hadn’t thought he was allergic though, so he never got it checked out. Not that he would to begin with. It must have developed after he left Italy.

Will narrowed his eyes at him. “You got tons of old head fractures, so you probably have a history of concussions that you never went to a doctor with.”

Nico mused over this. “It’s true. You can’t fall off a few buildings and not expect some damage.”

“ _Buildings?_ ” Will exclaimed, grabbing Nico’s arm. “ _Plural?_ You fell of _buildings?_ ”

Nico rolled his eyes. “It’s no big deal; I fell from one building onto another one. Several times.” He could sometimes feel the phantom pain from one of the biggest falls he had once. Broke his arm and Bianca prayed his head was fine as she’d heard it _clink_ against the pavement. _You’re lucky you got a thick skull, if nothing else_ , she’d said when his concussion wore off a few days later. He personally didn’t believe _praying_ away anything helped, but Bianca has always had more faith in the presuming ‘righteous’ ways than he did. The knot in his gut twisted harder.

Will sighed towards the sky like he held it accountable for all his problems. “So you won’t go see a doctor even if you will most probably die?”

Nico shot him an amused smirk. “No. No, I won’t. I had one shot at a hospital visit throughout my life and I kinda planned to use it when I was old and sick, maybe had a heart attack in the streets, or something.” He said it as a joke, but it was the most honest fact about him he’d ever told Will Solace. Nico’s mother, sister and himself all had one strike each, because a second hospital visit would not end happily. María di Angelo made sure to wire their brains like that before she passed away. “But now it’s wasted on goddamn hypothermia,” he sighed.

“That makes no sense,” Will stated. “Elaborate?”

Nico said, “You wish.”

“I do!” Will whined. Nico refused to meet his eye as they kept walking. He was enjoying himself too much to notice he took the lead. They kept bickering over little things with no importance and Nico felt himself relax. The high of accomplishment ebbed out, but was replaced with a low hum of content. Will told him about his ‘ _incompetent brother Austin but he’s still a good guy deep inside I know it_ ’. Will had faith in anyone, much like Bianca had had faith in _everyone_. Will believed in anyone he came across, Bianca had believed everyone could make the right choice. Nico stole a glance at his hair again and noticed he had freckles spotting his neck. Interesting.

“Leo is building something,” Nico said, to think of something else. “I got no idea what, but it’s for a competition or something that the university is setting up.”

Will perked up. “The engineering fair? Man, I haven’t attended that since I went there for pre-med.” His fingers brushed Nico’s and Nico decided it was an accident.

He shrugged. “I mean, I went there too, but never heard any talk about a fair.”

Will got some kind of glint in his eye. Nico got a chilling reminder of Kayla. Will smiled smugly. “You went to uni? What major?”

He said it like he didn’t believe he’d get a decent answer, but Nico decided to do just that, for once. “A bachelor degree in political science. I dropped out after the first year, though.” There wasn’t a ton of information to get on him in a possible university archive, so for once, he might talk freely about something.

Will halted. “Holy shit- _wait_. I’m not surprised.” Nico rolled his eyes and Will looked sternly at him. “With all your political pieces, it really isn’t a shock.”

Nico laughed dryly. “Political science didn’t teach me about political and social issues – it _did,_ however, make me realize that they don’t get addressed nearly as much as they should.”

Will glanced at him, uncertain. He hesitated. “…So why did you drop out?”

Nico pondered over ways to explain it. Would he bring his father into it and make it even more complicated – would he go with the classical, but also partially true ‘it wasn’t for me’ excuse – would he not answer it? Will waited patiently and they paced onward. A swift breeze rippled through his hair softly. Nico settled on that the truth is what you make it – what you choose to say and make reality. He consciously steered them east. A shaky breath escaped him. “It’s… it’s not technically good,” he started. Will nodded, urging him to keep going. He picked his words carefully. “I got my studies financed, but only if I’d end up a lawyer. One year into college and I got that college wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

Will didn’t miss a beat. “That sounds awfully privileged.”

“Only privilege I’ve ever had, Solace,” Nico defended. Being dragged across the world to a country just as messed up, if not worse, being stranded, always in hiding – even if he went to public school – he always had to melt into the background. Don’t stand out. Don’t give them a reason to dig up what your mother buried. Leo mocked him about how he wasn’t _edgy_ , but _on edge_ at all times. Nico couldn’t argue with that.

He sent Will a sideways glance. “But you grew up reading med books. Who are you to talk about privilege, Solace?”

Will sighed at the sky. His hoodie strings weren’t level. Nico ached to even them out. “Yeah, I definitely wasn’t _poor_. I got my dad’s surname – a world renown doctor’s name, always had a home, my mom earned as much as a paramedic could – which wasn’t much but it was enough.” They steered into a street Nico knew all too well. Will tugged the longer string absentmindedly and Nico wanted to scream.

The alley was narrow, steps and dumpsters Nico had come to know remained unchanged. Old rainwater dripped from the fire escape. It hadn’t rained in days. Little sunlight found its way in between these close brick walls covered with Nico’s early paint trials and colour tests. Nico held his breath as Will halted to a stop, recognizing the graffiti.

Will touched the moist brick wall. “Where did you take me?” he turned to the boy beside him, a small smile breaking his curious face.

Nico _slid_ , more than jumped, onto a dumpster lid. The cans clinked in his bag. “This is the east side. C’me on.” He grabbed a hold the gutter and holed himself up. Each step, each hold, was practised and perfected the same way the grip of a fork was. Nico rose higher with ease, hands remembering spots, feet not bothering to test the weight.

Will hurried after him, up the fire escape, light on his feet but with untrained coordination. Nico missed a step on a slippery steel windowsill, and his flow of movement stuttered. Nico cursed his year off as he rolled ungracefully onto the roof, seven stories up. He got to his feet and watched Will heave for air when he reached the top hand bars moments later, fingers shaking.

“If you’re gonna wake with the sun every day,” Nico said, out of breath, “then you might as well get the best view.” Nico offered Will his hand and helped him to his feet. It was chilly in the free air, higher up than the other buildings. Will’s touch was warm and safe against Nico’s cold skin.

She sky was warming, waking slowly. It was a sunset of paintings by people who rarely saw the sun. the waking day flowed over a grey sky like seawater inching closer and closer with every wave. Nico remembered seeing this sight for the first time and understanding why every living being on earth needed the sun as a life force. How could life _not_ want to be touched by it – to be trapped in a committing circle of life – to reply on the sun’s frequent appearances?

Nico watched Will stare enchanted by the view, much like Nico had a couple years ago. A smile tugged at Will’s lips as his eyes shined in the morning light. A warm feeling settled in Nico’s gut. He hadn’t thought about it, which was dangerous in a world that wanted to hurt him every chance it got. But with the wall done, it wasn’t really anything tying him to Will anymore – nothing he had to come back to. He _needed_ Will to adore something else about Nico’s world. He wanted him there and _want_ was a bad territory to move into. Because if the wall was done, they were done. Done with whatever thing they were doing. Done walking in on each other – communication broken.

Will was watching soft light warm the city to life, lighten buildings and caressing hills. His thumb rubbed soothing circles on the back of Nico’s hand.  Nico watched him, a genuine, entrancing smile seeping onto his face and he started to think maybe he didn’t need Will adore something else that was solemnly Nico’s – maybe _he_ needed to adore _Will_.

“I finished the wall,” Nico mumbled, fixated on Will’s halo hair and his illuminated features. A gush of wind hit them and hair got in Nico’s eyes. He was about to brush it away when Will’s grip tightened around his hand and Nico felt a warm touch to his forehead clearing his vision.

Will stared at him, still with the same kind of wonder on his face. “You did?”

 _Lapis_.

Nico nodded somewhat somber. He trusted Will the same way he trusted Leo and he wanted to prove it. He wanted to peel off the layers of secrecy he’d grown accustomed to the past eight years. He wanted to believe he could trust Will with stories and details even Percy didn’t know about. Nico leaned into Will’s hand briefly. “I won’t be climbing around in your neighbourhood anymore.” Nico mused. “That you know of, at least.”

Will had the audacity to smile. The light danced across his patched of freckles. “Would’ve hurt more if didn’t want you there.” His hand slipped down to Nico’s cheek as a familiar Spanish curse cut through the morning followed by a heavy, metallic _clunk_. Will’s head snapped to his left. The sound came from the other side of the building, but Nico already knew who and where.

“Leo,” Nico sighed and stepped away from Will. He went to lean over the edge, Will following closely behind. “LEO – you alive?”

There was a sound of something else getting knocked over and a can rolling over their wood floor. Leo’s cowlick leaned out of the window. He wore his _‘#HotStuff Team Leo’_ shirt again. “ _Estoy bien_ , but dude, you never came home, what the fuck.”

Will nudged him. “You live here?”

Nico shot him a small smile over his shoulder. “Fourth floor. Leo almost dies every morning, but I usually sleep through it.”

Will stiffens a laugh as Leo calls up to them, “You keep saying that, but I’m not the one who effectively ruin my own lungs ‘in the name of justice’. Now come help me clean this up.”

“ _Un momento_.” Nico leaned back. Heights didn’t scare him, but being exposed did. He eyed Will. “The fire escape really is the only way down.”

Will pocketed his hands. “I guess that’s my queue to leave.”

“Yeah,” Nico muttered. “Unless you want me to _Spider-Man_ you down the building.”

“As tempting as that sounds, I’m gonna pass it up. I’ve seen your balance issues.” He smirked. “Also, who are you to convince a kid you’re a superhero?”

“ _Go_.” Nico pushed him across the roof, Will’s laughter resonating with his pulse.

“ _Fine_ ,” Will said from the top of the fire escape. The sun behind him hid his face in shadows of his hair. “I’ll see you tonight.” Nico protested that _no you won’t?_ when Will placed a feather light kiss on his cheek. It prickled where his lips had been like a melting sensation. Will stepped back, smiling smugly. “I’ll figure out how.”

Then he was gone. Nico was left standing on the rooftop, sun bathed and elated, grinning like a moron. His core felt like it was defrosting, evaporating, anticipating. It was a promise.


	12. The Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> remember that "important point" in the story I talked about?   
> it's here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited for this one. It's fucking 8k, I'm DYING.   
> god bless Goddess_Of_Coffee_Addictions for helping me with the Spanish, you are a literal angel walking the earth and I hope you and the rest of you enjoy this chapter.

Leo had grease up to the tip or his ears when he slumped inside apartment seven. He was sweating and being generally gross, Nico noted from where he sat. Leo ripped open the fridge, fell to his knees and stuck his head into the cold. It stayed there.

“Bad day?” Nico asked through his mouthful of yogurt. He sat cross-legged on the bed, sun dimming behind him. He’d woken up a few hours earlier, in cold sweat and clutching his sheets, trying to calm his breathing. _Più veloce, Nico_. He’d felt María di Angelo’s polished nails dig into his arm as she’d dragged him through the dark, Bianca by his side. _Essere in silenzio, figlio_. He’d heard the sound of his mother folding papers sharply and the clicks of her heals on airport pavement. He’d smelled Bianca’s shampoo mixed with the cheap leather of coach seats.

_È semplicemente un piccolo viaggio_ , María had whispered into his hair while his sister slept. _It’s just a small trip._ It was only years later he started to think she was convincing herself instead.

Leo muffled a _fuck off_ as Nico opened the door wider and joined him inside the fridge. Leo’s face had smudged up the white interior. “Bad morning?” Leo asked although it was well into the afternoon hours.

“ _Notte_ ,” Nico corrected.  “I dreamed about Bianca. And Italy.”

“Thought you said you’ve never been there.”

Nico tried to shrug. “I don’t remember a lot. And those things I _do_ remember are foggy and feels fabricated.”

Leo declared, “Sucks.” He handed Nico a can of soda and got out of the fridge. “I’ve been working on _The Car_ most of the day and Beckendorf is grilling my ass for it.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “I mean, I get it. You’re supposed to _not_ waste your time at work.” He chugged the coke.

Leo pointed an accusing finger at him. “Just you wait, di Angelo. She will rise again, I’m gonna make it happen.”

The Car was an abandoned vehicle Leo was positive still had a few more years to run. She came in the auto shop a year ago and she never came out. Leo only got more cocky about fixing her the more he worked on her, claiming he’d had another breakthrough about her engine every few weeks. It was taking a turn for the obsessive, Nico was sure of it.

Leo was intensely focused on finger scratching away a black spot on his mechanic overalls – a spot Nico had drawn on with a sharpie last year, because he himself was an asshole. “Beckendorf is always having your ass beaten for something,” Nico stated. “Why do you look like someone pissed in your coffee?”

“Nico, images – _ahh_.” He rubbed his eyes as to free them from sins. “Me and Jason is just having a hard time.”

Nico scooted closer. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“ _Me tienes qué matar primero_ ,” Leo retorted. _You have to kill me first._ “There’s no fucking way I’m telling you while alive.”

Nico narrowed his eyes at him. “Did _you_ kill anyone?”

Leo snorted, fingers scratching more rapidly. “No, bro.” He paused, weighing his options. “But I might as well have.”

Nico sighed. “You can’t just say – “

“They’re gonna treat me like a murderer _anyway_ ,” Leo cut in. He stood, the overalls making a swishing sound. His can dodged their brim-filled trashcan. “Or worse.”

Nico watched him. He tried not to show how concerned he was. He had met Beckendorf before when he was picking Leo up for a towing uptown. He was a big guy, wore clean white shirts contrasting his dark skin and contrasting Leo’s smudged clothing. Nico had been interested, but he dated Jason at the time. The thing that stuck with him from the meeting, though, was that while they were chatting and waiting for Leo, two cops showed up and frisked him, not even giving Nico a second glance. He remember looking down at himself and thinking _I look like a fucking heroin addict_ in his too big pants and oil stained shirt from laying on the apartment floor. _Or homeless._ He hadn’t slept in days. Beckendorf looked clean, smelled clean, and _was_ clean. But still. Still they didn’t even touch Nico.

“Maybe if I turned myself in, they might go easy on me,” Leo said, fiddling with his screwdriver. “ _Es lo correcto_ , bro.”

“If you have a death wish,” Nico muttered from the floor. Louder, he reminded him, “You’ve already had so many close calls with them. They’re gonna want to get you if you actually did something this time.”

Leo smiled mockingly. “It just gets worse the longer I wait, though. Jason is crippling with guilt from not telling them. I am too, for that matter.” His hands shook in rhythm with his bouncing leg.

Nico sighed. “ _Dimmi, per favour._ ” _Just tell me, please._

“ _Yo no te quiero envuelto en esto_ ,” Leo retorted. _I don’t want you involved._ “You’re terrified of the cops, even more than I am.”

Nico gestured widely. “For a _good_ reason!”

Leo snorted. “Giving a few buildings some extra decór doesn’t get you qualified as a murderer.” He paced across the room to get some clean clothes. “Not _you_ at least, _huero_.” The t-shirt muffled his voice, but it still hit close to home. Nico was well aware that as far as Leo knew – Leo was right – but because he didn’t know everything, because Nico didn’t _tell_ him everything, it was uncalled for. But Italians and the Irish had long since been mixed in with the American whites, so to Leo it didn’t matter. _He’s right_ , Nico reminded himself.

Nico was heading out of the door – to start the day, to check up on _Survivor’s Guilt_ and _others_ – when Leo called after him, “Text me when to pick you up at the graveyard!”

Nico halted in his tracks. Cold seeped into his spine and he turned abruptly back to Leo. “What are you talking about?”

Leo pointed to the calendar on the wall. Nico was positive he’d never touched it. Time was an irrelevant concept for him outside of when night time was and when it _wasn’t_. He hadn’t paid a piece of paper telling him which season it was, much attention. Now he wished he had.

**November 4 th:  
**‘ _Mamma’_

Nico’s core tensed up. Bianca’s handwriting looked scrawny and stretched, as if she’d done it in a rush out of the door – to catch her bus – to manage to pack her bags – before meeting her corporal – before catching her plane. It had hung on his wall for nearly a year and after Leo had flipped to November, he had yet to notice the scribble ‘ _Mamma_ ’. One word written with steady hands, soft hands, hands that had brushed through his hair when it got too long or held his head when she kissed his forehead. Olive skin hands to match his own.

Today was the day their mother died.

Nico grabbed one of Leo’s sharpies and flipped to December in one motion. He didn’t have the guts to actually _write_ her name – not now, not yet – but he was going to mark it. The sharpie hovered over December 23rd as Nico bit back the crawling misery. _Make it real. See it on paper, make it real_. As if he hadn’t seen Bianca’s time of death a hundred times in the vague military times they’d given him. _Between 1615 and 1925._ They were at war – they’d told him – they couldn’t be bothered with checking the time every time someone died.

“So…” Leo urged. “You’re not going?”

Nico turned to him, sharpie scrawling some kind of swirl, hopefully on the 23rd. Nico noticed Leo’s car keys in his hands. “Could you give me a ride?”

-*-

Lou Ellen laid spread across Will’s bed – much to his disapproval. It would take days to get her smell out of his sheets. She had once crashed at their place because the party had been closer to them and her place, and because Will was a good friend, he had taken the couch. Big mistake. She wore the strongest Girl’s Sport perfume advertised and now she was rubbing her neck on his covers on purpose.

Will frowned at his phone. They were facetiming while Will and Cecil was out getting something to eat. She’d told them they could all figure it out on the way, but she wasn’t going. Paying for her dinner was their payment for eating all her pies for months.

“Will, my man, I’m _craving_ a cheeseburger,” Cecil complained beside him. They were walking down the street and had already passed several takeout places with hamburgers. Will made a face.

“ _Was that Cecil? Tell that weak ass motherfucker that he can get his_ ‘cravings’ _heard when HIS satanic uterus is committing motherfucking suicide and shedding HIS insid –_ “

“She says no, bro,” Will pleaded, carefully. Lou Ellen was a force to be reckoned with and Will wasn’t up for the task. She went suddenly quiet in his headphones and Will checked his screen.

She stared back at him, genuinely shocked. “ _Dude, I gotta call you back, I’m getting another call._ No _, cheeseburgers. Something with protein or sugar – bye._ ”

The call ended before Will got in a word. He pocketed his phone. “She said something with either protein or sugar.”

Cecil made a face. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Will shrugged. “Then she gets a salad for being so vague, because I swear to _god –_ “

“ _Fine_ ,” Will gave in, “but then _you’re_ taking the fall for it. Remember what she said the last time we bought her a salad without talking to her about it?”

Cecil winched. “ _Would you feed a grizzly with fucking lettuce, you piece of shits?_ ” he recited her. They pondered over the memory not so fondly. It’s not that she was ungrateful, she’d told them afterwards, after scolding their ears out – it was just that they had assumed _salad_ was her ‘whatever-food’, while theirs were burgers or pizza or noodles. Cecil looked hopefully at Will. “I don’t suppose we can take the fall together?”

Will shook his head as they kept pacing down the street. “No way, man. I gotta live to see the end of tonight.”

Cecil smacked his forehead. “Oh, my god, that’s right. Lou told me about Kayla’s get-together. Totally slipped my mind.”

Will squinted at him. “Her what, now?” Then it dawned on him. Kayla’s fellowship. She’d applied to take the exam a year earlier than planned, which by itself was outrageous and unheard of, but she’d been talented enough and daughter of the right father, so it had pulled through. She’d told him they were celebrating tonight. Will had just forgotten in the midst of _small, dark and gentle_. He couldn’t miss it. But he had promised Nico. “Oh.”

“This seems like a compromise,” Cecil said, stopping in his tracks.

Will eyed the Chinese restaurant and takeout sign. “Yeah. Let’s get her the one with cashews – she likes nuts.”

“Tragically not in every sense,” Cecil murmured, holding the glass door open for Will. Will sighed as he slipped inside.

-*-

Nico knew he should visit more often. There was no trace of plants or decorations before him, but that’s because he’d never planted anything. No rotting leaves, no saggy flowers. He’d wanted to, when she died, but Nico didn’t know what Italians decorated graveyards with, and he’d be damned if he dishonoured his mother with something half-assed American. So he’d done nothing – which had probably been worse.

Bianca knew how, but she didn’t know it properly. Hell, they were barely teenagers when she passed away. She didn’t even get a tombstone. Nico remembered fighting with Bianca about it, because _of course_ she should have something left standing with her name on it, but Bianca had, with tears rolling down her cheeks, harshly whispered that they couldn’t risk it. That it was too dangerous. That this had all been for nothing, then. That _mamma_ did too much for them to cast it all away like that.

Bianca had gripped the back of his neck with one hand and wiped his tears away with the other. Her eyes had been hard and haunted as she whispered through her teeth, despising every word, hating this world for making her say it to her baby brother –

“ _She can’t exist. Not here_.”

So they had pulled in a favour and gotten her cremated without public records. Then they’d had another argument; what would they do with her ashes? Ideally, they would spread them in The Great Canal snaking its way through Venice, her childhood home, but they couldn’t go back. Not ever.

That had been their longest fight. Nico felt his chest clench up and he wished he could fight with her like that again. Feel her anger and every word strike him, making his blood rush. Now, it just left him with a monotone tune in the back of his head. He remembered her words and gestures, but they were just that. Fading memories. Her voice – the sound of home – had died with her. On the other side of the Earth with no exact time of death.

“Be careful.” “ _I always am_.”

Yes, but the suicide bomber hadn’t been.

A breeze touched his hair like a secret caress and he felt he was crying, tears chilling on his cheeks. He spoke soft, Italian apologies as he sat down before the three they had buried her by. It had been a compromise. He apologized for being absent, for losing hold of himself, for being a stranger – for forgetting so much of what his mother had taught him. Threes whispered comfort in the wind. The last of the leaves were letting go and coming soaring down to him.

Nico’s voice was barely a whisper, “I didn’t know how much it was to carry until I had to carry it by myself.” He’d always had Bianca to double check with, to rely on, to share everything with. She’d been his backup. He hadn’t even posted a letter without telling her first. His voice screwed up. “I’ve tried to do it alone, but I don’t know _how_ , Mamma. I live as if I’m non-existent, like you taught us, but no one _knows me_ because I can’t afford anyone _to_ know me.”

He took a sharp breath and held it, trying to extinguish the lump in his throat. “I miss her. I miss you, but it’s been six years and I know how to live without you now. I don’t know how to live without Bianca.” He felt the chilling temperature of the earth seep into his ass and thighs. “Not yet.”  

The memory hit him like a tidal wave – focused and crystal clear – nothing like the hazy patches from this morning. Nico and Bianca was about to enrol into the American public school. High school. Italy had always done badly to engage English to its population, so the little English he knew, he didn’t know well. The night before their first day, María di Angelo had sat them down and given them the talk they would recite for years to come.

“ _Blend in – cut your vowels short and even your speech, learn_ their _walk and_ their _gestures. Become invisible in this land where everyone wants to stand out. Don’t give them a reason to look at you twice. Adapt, but never forget. Keep your roots – remember your heritage._ ”

A cold had settled in his gut as he’d understood, in that moment, that they were never going back home. That cold grip had yet to let go.

His pocket buzzed, launching him back from María’s words. Nico produced his phone and checked his messages, shaking his head back to reality.

         **From: Tanaka, Drew – 10:04pm  
         **_i know its super late but i need u to cover for me, ive already left, come quick_

How had it gotten so late already? He texted Leo to pick him up. The graveyard was a few miles away from the city, but Nico was currently nowhere close to the graveyard. He sprinted. Leo barely knew that he had a dead mother; much less that she didn’t have a tombstone or her own place in a graveyard. Out here with fresh air and new beginnings, Nico could see a clear sky for the first time in forever. He sprinted away from his mom and everything he knew about Italy – his _home_ , he reminded himself – and back to what he’d come to know as _familiar_ and _stable_ and _safe_. In his core, he knew Italy wasn’t what his mother had hoped it would be to him. It wasn’t what he longed for, not anymore. It wasn’t his light at the end of a dark tunnel. It wasn’t at the tip of his tongue when someone asked ‘ _so where are you from?_ ’ The thing is, though – neither was _this_ place.

Something lessened in his mind, like a knot finally letting up.

He jogged onto the parking lot as Leo pulled up, headlights flashing over him. Nico hurried inside and cursed at the seatbelt.

Leo turned down the music – alternative rock, that _loser_ – and gave him a look. “Why the rush, di Angelo? Your mom haunting you?”

Nico glared at him as the seatbelt clicked into place. “No, _testa di cazzo_. Drew needs me jump her shift right now.”

Leo’s a-little-too-sharp turns got them onto the highway. “ _Now?_ Nico, it’s almost eleven, that’s a dick move.”

“It’s fine,” Nico mumbled as he searched through the pockets of his leather jacket. “I’d probably stayed out all night if she hadn’t texted me.” He found a piece of paper. “And then you’d get worried – “ Hands blindly touched for a pen of any kind in Leo’s dashboard.

“By the stick,” Leo supplied.

“ – and it would’ve been a mess.” Nico scribbled down the few words he could remember, but it wasn’t nearly all of it. His head felt light. “We need to stop by home, first. I need my stash.” Leo rolled his eyes and mouthed _of course you do_ as he steered off the highway.

-*-

Will knew it had been wrong to assume Nico worked at _Sidetracked_ every night, but he’d had a good feeling about it today. And he was usually right. They kept close to the bar counter, but even the passed out guy in the back with wine spotting his shirt had noticed when one of the bartenders had dashed across the space to the front door, her partner yelling _Drew, what the fuck, get your ass back here_. Then, as if an all-powerful force had heard his prayers, Drew had called back over her shoulder _I’ll get Nico!_

Will took some reassurance that 1. Nico was actually coming and Will hadn’t talked Kyla out of a nightclub for no reason and 2. Most people seemed to call him Nico.

Twenty minutes later and Will began to worry again. He brought their empty beer bottles up to the counter. Piper, he remembered her name spoken in between Jason’s giggles, seemed to work sloppy under stress of running the bar singlehandedly. She relaxed a little upon seeing Will on her right. Taking the bottles she said, “Hey, man. Can I get you anything?”

“Another round?” he asked. Piper did a hand motion as if _coming right up_ while Will steeled himself for his next question. “Is Nico coming in?”

Piper rolled her eyes in the same way he’d noticed most of the people in Nico’s close circle did. “It’s always about _Nico_ , like, I thought _I_ was the celebrity here.” She chuckled as if it was an inside joke with herself. Will couldn’t tell if she was being serious. “That depends if she got a hold of him at all, blondie.”

Will furrowed his brows and Piper sighed. “You’re a friend of his, right?” She poured a beer. “He always got his phone on him, so we _know_ he knows we’re looking for him when we are – but it all depends on if he _wants_ to be found or not, if he’s doing something he considers more important or not. Here, I’ll call him.” Piper produced her phone and typed in the number.

Will gave her another funny look. “You know his number by memory?”

Piper shrugged as she put it to her ear. “Yeah. I’ve memorized Nico’s number, but not my boyfriend’s. Jason is kinda bitter about that.” She snickered. “But I like to think about it this way; if I get kidnapped and they break my phone, Nico is the first one I’d call to help me hide the bodies.” Piper smirked at him in a way that sent chills up his spine. 

There was a ruckus by the door and a stool got knocked over just as they heard a recorded, erupting drum beat accorded by _wake me up (wake me up inside)_. Will looked up to see Nico launching himself towards the bar, phone in one hand – Piper’s caller ID lighting up – and Lou Ellen’s tennis bag in the other. The doorman yelled after him, then yelled at Piper when Nico disappeared to the back. She did a questionable wave back. Or she flipped him off – Will wasn’t sure.

He turned to glance at his table and saw Kayla watching him. Even her tipsy-self had the same glint in her eyes. She raised her beer to him and smiled crookedly. Lou Ellen watched her somewhat amused. Cecil motioned for him to hurry up with the beers.

Nico emerged, having discarded his jacket for a _Sidetracked_ t-shirt. His eyes locked on Will and he could feel himself smile almost embarrassingly bright at him. “Will?” Nico muttered as he manoeuvred around a ruined stool – was that a microwave? – and extra drink cabinets. He had a faint smile, a result of confusion and wonder, and Will basked in the happiness of being the result of that. Nico stopped by the counter. “What are you doing here?”

“Hi,” Will said as a manner of greeting, although he was certain he’d greeted Nico properly exactly once before. He pointed over his shoulder. “We’re here celebrating Kayla. She’s moving up the ranks soon.”

Nico’s eyes landed on their table and he stiffened. Then he took a step back. “Will, they – “

Realization slapped Will in the face. “No, don’t worry,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t have brought them if I thought they would cause you trouble.” Will smiled softly, reassuringly. “Besides, I was kinda counting on you being here today.”

Nico relaxed somewhat at that. “But I wasn’t supposed to work. You got lucky,” he stated as he leaned on the counter in front of Will.

“I guess fate fancies me, then.”

Nico was about to reply something snarky when Piper tapped him on the shoulder. She smiled motherly down at him. “Are we still on for Saturday?”

Nico made a face like he’d clearly forgotten. Will couldn’t help but be amused. “Yeah,” Nico hesitated, “the park, right?”

“Mhm, so it’s in – “

“Two days,” Nico cut her off. “I know.”

Piper looked boarder-line shocked. “ _You know what day it is?_ ”

Nico’s gaze fell slightly. “It’s November 4th.” Piper only looked more confused, mirroring Will.

“Damn straight,” the doorman said, slapping his hands onto the bar counter. He pointed an accusing finger at Nico, who grimaced. “You! What the _fuck_ are you doing here, Nico?”

“Working,” Nico replied sternly as he started cleaning some glasses.

Piper hissed, “What’s your problem, Connor?”

Connor showed no signs of having heard her, and even though Nico refused to look back at him, or either of them for that matter, Connor kept staring at him.

Will was about to tell him off too, but Nico caught his eye and shook his head once, barely noticeable. Will settled back into stool.

Connor sighed, his glare softening just a bit. “Dude, look at me.” Nico’s eyes remained glued to the glass in his hands. “Please?” Connor tried.

“Just go,” Piper ordered.

Connor just shook his head. “Just for today – go home.”

Nico sat the glass down calmly. “If I didn’t think I was fit to work today, I wouldn’t have come in, Connor. You _know_ that.” He glared at the doorman.

Piper injected, “What’s today?” Will wanted to know too.

Connor was about to lash out the truth when Nico forestalled him. He raised his hand halfway in a manner of silencing an auditorium. Connor choked on his words. “That seems kinda personal, don’t you think?” Nico said, to Connor, an underlying threat seeping into his words.

Connor hesitantly moved away from the counter. He seemed defeated and bitter. “Just…” he started, “take it easy.”

Nico rolled his eyes as he turned back to Will. He understood that Nico would be secretive towards _him_ , but Piper seemed to be a long-time friend and Nico was still…

“Lou Ellen is giving you the stink eye,” Nico murmured. Will didn’t know how Nico could tell, as he hadn’t looked up, but Will had no doubt he was right. He stole a glance over his shoulder and sure enough – Lou Ellen was gnawing her empty beer bottle, staring at him. Nico cleared his throat. “I’ll bring your drinks – go sit with them.” Will searched his face for any hostility, any reason for Will to feel like this had been a mistake and Nico didn’t want him here – but there was none. Nico offered a small, honest smile. “I’ll be there.”

A big crowd of bulky people pushing each other around and laughing, came in as Will settled down by his table. He recognized Jason and he seemed to be leading them in.

Cecil whistled. “Nice. _Police_ babes.” He winked at Lou Ellen. “Those are rare.”

Will’s head snapped to Cecil. “What? How do you know?” An ugly feeling settled in his stomach as Cecil pointed to a woman’s shirt. _Police Department_. Scanning the crowd, he could see Nico had discovered the same thing, as he stood petrified behind the counter. Piper waved Jason over with much enthusiasm but her smile faded the second Nico whispered probable threats at him. Jason tried to reason with him, it seemed, but gave up sooner than Will would have thought. Jason didn’t strike him as a sarcastic type, and judging by his body language and stern face, he was used to arguing with Nico. And losing, apparently. Jason used their adopted eye roll as he followed Nico when he brought their drinks.

“You’re giving me no good reason why they _shouldn’t_ be here,” Jason prompted as they got in earshot. “This is just your discrimination and stereotyping of cops, Nico.”

“’Discrimination’,” Nico mocked him as he sat the beers down. “Sorry about this.” He looked them over, his gaze lingering on Will just a little longer.

“Yeah, it’s not like I comment how much coffee _you_ drink to live up to _your_ stereotype.” Jason nodded to Will. “Hi doc, nice to see you again.”

“I’m a nurse.”

Nico lashed out, “Those things have no correlation! You _know_ cops will look to minorities for committing crimes before imagining a white person did it.”

Jason sighed. “Yeah, I know, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them a chance to change for the better. They have done nothing to you, so don’t you think you owe them the benefit of the doubt?” He placed his hands on his hips as if he was scolding his preteen son.

“Seriously?” Nico asked, voice tense as he gripped the tray until his knuckles whitened. “Are you seriously trying to distance yourself from the rest of them?” He bit back his next sentence and took a deep breath, gathering himself. “Jason.” Nico seemed exhausted. “You gotta pick a side. You can’t become a cop and act like you’re ‘the one black sheep out of a herd’ – you either commit or you don’t. You either don’t fight me on these issues and accept that cops _kill innocent people –_ or you’re telling me you see no pattern in who you shoot at.”

Jason extended his arms. He didn’t seem to fit into his _Police Academy_ sweatshirt. “This is not about me!”

“Except that it is.”

They were in tense silence for a second too long. A sharp and unmistakeable giggle sneaked in between the arguments and all heads turned to Kayla. She was blushing madly behind her hand as her giggles and hiccups interrupted each other. “Sorry,” she managed, “but this is hilarious. Hi, hello, hey, little runaway.”

_Damn_ , Will realized, _Lou smuggled in her tiny airplane vodka bottles._

“Also,” Kayla said, inaccurately waving her beer in Jason’s direction. “ _I’m_ his doctor. Was? Yeah, was.” She slung her arm over Lou Ellen’s shoulder, who was glaring at Nico. “He never came back with my girl’s bag. She hasn’t played tennis all week!” Kayla threw her other hand up as if this was the most distressing thing.

Nico stilled and looked to Will in panic. Jason eyed her, looking confused and uncomfortable. “Nico doesn’t have a –“ He blanked. Jason looked to Will. He tried not to flinch under the analysing glare. Jason’s head whipped back to Nico. “You were emitted?!” Nico scratched his arm and didn’t meet his eyes as he walked around Jason to get back to the crowded bar. Jason chased him with hasty steps. “Nico, you can’t keep these things from me – what, are you still sick?”

Nico waved him off. “You made it quite clear that we’re going to stay out of each other’s business so I was just honouring that.”

Jason retorted something about life and death, but they were out of earshot. It looked like Nico was handling it casually. Will wished he knew him well enough to tell if he actually was. Nico looked over at him every now and then, making Will feel a little more at ease.

Kayla clicked her tongue. “Nico,” she mused, tasting both vowels of his name. Will was immediately uncomfortable. Her head laid on Lou Ellen’s shoulder, who pretended not to notice. “Well, he’s _definitely_ European. Nice catch, bro.” She winked at Will with a sheepish grin. It didn’t help.

Still, curiosity tugged on him. “How can you tell?”

Cecil frowned at him. He did a violent squint, as he tended to do when the booze got to him. “Dude, I know you suck with linguistics, but how did you just miss _that_?” Will urged him onwards. If it was that obvious then it wasn’t really digging into his past, was it? Cecil gestured to the now empty space beside them. “When he lashed out, it was like someone was skipping stones on his vocal cords. Like, I didn’t hear it before now, but it was so absolutely there.”

“Mhm,” Kayla hummed from Lou Ellen’s shoulder, poking one of the rune tattoos on Lou’s arm. “He’s pretty good at covering it up – I didn’t catch it before now and I passed Latin with honours.”

Will had barely passed Latin to begin with. He glanced over at Nico. His hair was thick and wavy, a bit too long – not as a look, but more like he didn’t bother to cut it often enough. It was black as the midnight sky, but Will knew morning light brought out radiant warmth – like sparks and cracks in burning fire wood.

“I bet,” Kayla’s words surged in on one another, “that he’s Greek. Willow, mah boy, just _look_ at that jawline.”

Will would have, if he hadn’t been distracted by _someone’s_ hand on his sister’s inner thigh. He narrowed his eyes at Lou Ellen. She sipped her beer and shrugged one shoulder. He glared. She begrudgingly retreated her hand, sour look on her face. Cecil began to tell them about his new probable breakthrough in _League of Legends_. He was positive that _this_ time it was for real. His beer slipped in his hand a lot when he gestured until Will convinced him to let it _stay_ on the table.  

It didn’t take long before a woman stumbled into _Sidetracked_ and Kayla gasped, loudly and not at all subtle. “That’s Nico’s sister, _christ_.” Kayla ducked behind Cecil. “Not a real sister, but I’m pretty sure me having knowledge of a hospital runaway outside of work is punishable. She could sue me.”

Will went over to the bar counter to get a closer look. Nico sent him a quick smile as Will sat down on one of the stools close to him. Will scouted for the stumbling woman and found her being held up at the door by Connor. She had a long coffee bean coloured braid slung over her shoulder and wavy bangs framing her face. Her skin glowed in the same way polished gold did. She was holding her hand up so she was either about to slap Connor, which Will wouldn’t mind, or she was claiming authority. It was hard to tell because she was four shots away from blacking out and he understood why Connor had stopped her. Drunk people are bad for business – they might buy more drinks, but the ruckus they make isn’t worth it.

She spotted someone in the crowd. “Jason Grace, talk to him.” Her voice was low, but carrying, like the silence before a storm. The conversation in the room dipped just enough to notice before it picked up again. Jason perked up and muttered a small _oh damn_ as his eyes landed on her. He did as he was told.

Nico looked after him and spotted the centre of attention. He inhaled sharply and hissed something at the ceiling, or the sky, through his teeth. Tension weighed on his shoulders and he stepped to the back wall.

“What are you gonna do?” Will asked, hunching down for no good reason. He’s never met Nico’s not-sister.

Nico tried to make himself as small as possible standing in the back corner. “This night just keeps getting worse. I’m considering migrating to Mexico.” He looked to Will, just a wooden bar counter between them. “Or I would, but I got something to do first.”

Will recalled the tennis bag with metallic sounding insides, probably filled with paint of all kinds.  “Like what?”

Nico smiled coyly, making Will regret asking. “You.” He whispered it as if they were children playing hide and seek with muddy knees and stars in their eyes – not adults seducing each other with the metallic smell of vomit and beer hanging around them. They stayed like that, smiling and chuckling at a bad joke and for a moment, a second, nothing else mattered and it was just the two of them dancing around each other like they had for weeks already.

It felt like reaching a peak.

And Will could tell Nico felt it too.

The woman from the door approached the counter, Jason close behind her. She was swaying slightly, but tried to play it off as a fancy walk. Jason hunched on a stool next to her. “Please don’t give her anything, Nico.”

“I don’t think I legally can.”

At the sound of his voice, her head snapped to Nico. She squinted as if he was a mild nuisance. “Benjamin,” she mused. “You’re still alive.” There was no sign of surprise or recognition as she took in the scene. “Or ‘Nico’, it seems. It suits you better.”

Jason sighed heavily and poked the woman’s shoulder, too tired to be quarrelling with Nico about it. “You know my ex, Sargent?”

The Sargent gave her subordinate a confused look. “Grace, you’re gay?”

Will shot in, “You used to date?”

“No, I’m not.”

Nico rolled his eyes, “Yes, we did.” He pointed a corkscrew at the woman. “She’s Reyna Ramírez-Arellano. Sorry, I meant _Sargent_.”

“Saved his life!” she announced, clutching the counter disgracefully. “Just like so many others and there’s nothing more to that story.” Committing insurance fraud was a felony, even for a Sargent, Will remembered.

Will glanced at Jason who looked down right horrified at Nico. Betrayed. A knot twisted in Will’s gut because Nico and Jason had to have so many days – hours, moments, laughs – shared for Jason to look like someone ripped the carpet from his feet. Right then Will was a bit frustrated with Nico too, for making the people who cared about him feel like this. Jason leaned forward on his forearm and pushed his glasses up his nose. Tired, he asked, “Do you tell me… anything? Of importance?”

Nico poured a couple beers to help Piper’s order. “No.” They could barely hear him over the noise, but judging from Jason’s face he might as well have shouted it from the rooftops. “I don’t have to. Besides, I told Will.” Nico gestured to his right.

Will chuckled humourlessly. “You did not.” He locked eyes with Jason. “I just happened to spot him at the right time as he climbed down the hospital _outer_ _wall_.” He made sure Jason knew he was opposed to the dumbest idea he’s ever witnessed unfold. “I helped him inside-“

“ _Forced me_.”

“- and I’m pretty sure if I wasn’t already cleared on your medical status, you wouldn’t have told me either. Even though your fingers bled all over the place.”

Jason held his palm up. “Wait, that was last week.” He narrowed his eyes at Nico. “And I remember because we at the academy had a field day with that case. And your fingers were all bandaged up for days.” Again, Will was struck with the knowledge that Jason _knew_ Nico. And Will didn’t. “Nico.” It sounded familiar, used, when he said it. It’s been spoken a thousand different ways a million times. “I’ve seen you almost every day since then. You’ve had every opportunity to tell me.”

“Wrong,” Nico corrected, slouching as close to Will as he could. Will smiled a little at that and the knot lessened ever so slightly. “You’ve been hanging with Leo. I’ve just happened to be there ‘cuz _someone_ ,” he turned his head to half-heartedly glare at Will, “grounded me to bed rest.”

Will smiled sheepishly back, but it was Kayla who stepped up behind him and caused Reyna to flinch violently. “It was me actually. Don’t give my scrub nurse the credit, dude.”

Reyna straightened and fixed Kayla with a steady look. “Dr Ferstien.” She made a very good attempt on selling the sibling story to Kayla, and because it was funny and Nico enjoyed the halfway attention he got from it, they kept it going for an hour before finally letting Reyna off the hook. Jason seemed more at ease the more he listened in on the story, too. Will saw Lou Ellen and Cecil talking to some of Jason’s fellow trainees. It felt nice just being in Nico’s space like this. He did notice Nico grow uneasy as the night was about to wrap up. Will would have asked him about it if Piper hadn’t told Nico he could leave early and he had jumped at the chance – promising Will to ‘catch him later’ as if that wasn’t highly unlikely.

When Will was finally shuffling Kayla home after Piper shooed them out of the bar during closing time, he couldn’t help the grin on his face as Kayla whipped her arms around as she explained the texture of the most fragile heart chambers. She refused to take a taxi home, saying the walk was too pretty to waste. “Wilburg, my son,” she announced, as if he wasn’t her brother by blood, “it’s an extremely rare opportunity to feel the fresh and living web of the human heart, I tell you.” Her vowels smeared together and Will tried his outmost to understand, in between his light-hearted chuckles.

She swung herself around a light post once, twice. “It’s almost as if we aren’t supposed to alter living hearts, you know what I’m saying? Like we should leave hearts alone to their own devices.” She came up to step beside him again. “We shouldn’t let other people tinker with our perfectly functional hearts, Wilford. It’s also illegal, as far as I know.”

Will raised an eyebrow at her. “Are we talking about Nico – or Lou?”

“People!” she exclaimed to the empty 3am night. Faded music from a loft party was the only sound reaching them. “All the folks. Of all races and sexualities. And genders.”

Will rubbed his forehead. “Kay,” he said as they approached her gate, tall and made up of painted black steel beans. “Are you even into women?”

“Pffft.” Her hands searched her purse for the keys. “ _No_ , man. What are you on about.” Kayla unlocked her gate. “ _You_ like women. Loser. _Damnit_.” Will just rolled his eyes as she stepped inside and gripped the steel beans as if they were her prison. “I’m all about the dick, how dare you.”

“Right.” He stepped out into the street again. “Same, I guess. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He turned to hurry home when Kayla’s shrilling voice reached him again.

“I still want her, though. I think.”

Will just smiled at her over his shoulder. “And that’s awesome, Kayla. Now get inside or you’ll catch hypothermia.”

“Not funny,” her voice sounded before the sound of a door shutting rang through the street.

His sister rented a rooftop apartment that had more window walls rather than concrete. It was one of the most down town apartment complexes in the city surrounded by the underlying noise of city life. It’s never completely quiet, and Kayla loved it that way. As Will took familiar turns, he remembered the unpromising quiet of growing up next to a countryside highway. It was only a few miles away but it was still a whole other world compared to the compact, dusty life he lived now.

He felt sleep tug in the back of his mind as he sidestepped a full trashcan and something shimmering, _fresh_ white caught his eye and he looked up.

He read it twice, three times, before he grasped what was actually written on the wall next to him.

‘ _I claimed the title effortless and undefeated, but it’s no glory_.’

There was a loud thud of feet landing hard on asphalt ground and Will turned. “I have been employee of the month _once!_ ” Nico thundered at him, but Will felt no anger. Where had he even jumped from? “And it was only because most of the crew went down with the syphilis and Annabeth had finals grilling her at the time.”

Will stared at him. Still sort of trapped in the bliss of seeing _his_ words on a building wall, no matter how much he claims to be against vandalism. But Nico had done that for _him_. It was personal and intimate in a way no one else knew, it was under-the-skin intimate and it was _scary_ in an exciting way.

Nico took a daring step closer, but he was still several feet away. “I actually can’t work in the bar. This is my second year, but I’m still not twenty-one yet.” He laughed humourlessly. “Yeah – I used to date Jason, and we’re good now, but seeing him trying to avoid the topic of liking men makes me feel like a shitty college experiment.”

_Oh_ , Will realized. Nico was being honest. Upfront. And it was probably the first time and Will didn’t know how to react just yet.

Nico buried his hands in his jacket pockets. He was wearing surprisingly little disguise for having just vandalized a semi-public wall. “I think pizza is overrated, and honestly so fetishized here in this country, which will mean a lot more when I tell you that I’m Italian.” Nico straightened. Will could tell how much it strained him to beat down some of the walls he’d isolated himself behind, probably for years. When he spoke again, the truths hit like snowballs, unavoidable and unapologetic. “I grew up in Venice. I haven’t been there since we moved – _I_ moved here. I either doubt my father is still alive or I just really want him to be dead, I’m still trying to figure that out.”

Nico took a deep breath and fixed his eyes on Will. “Six years ago today, my mother died. Homicide.” Will instinctively stepped towards him, but Nico held his palms up. A warning. “I don’t talk about it because people do that,” he said, a troubled frown on his face as he gestured to Will. “I’m fine with it now. My – my sister and I made peace with it years ago.”

Will steeled himself. Nico searched for something in Will’s face. Trust or honesty, Will didn’t know, but Nico found what he was looking for. His stern concentration melted into a daring, decent smile. “My name,” he said, smile growing by the vowel, “is Nico di Angelo.” Will almost felt like falling because _of course_ would his name be fucking _angel_. He felt his own face crack up into a smile too.

Will looked back at the white block letters, straight and long like train tracks. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. It was the quote, _his_ quote and it was up on a wall. The permanency of the still wet paint made his gut twist in anticipation. And joy. His fingers tingled as he read the sentence over and over again. He turned to Nico a few feet to his left. Nico was watching him with hunched shoulders, fiddling with his fingers – a nervous habit Will had come to know. His expression soft and eyes warm washed over Will and even here, in the dimly lit alley tucked in-between tall brick buildings; Will remembered how his hair looked like soothed fire wood cracking in the heat of morning light. It suddenly wasn’t a freezing night anymore.

Will stalked toward him – probably grinning like an idiot, he didn’t know – what he _did_ know was that this wasn’t something Nico just _did_. This was a gesture he’d planned and thought about and poured his heart and soul into, and he’d done it for _Will_. This graffiti art wasn’t for the public, or social justice or injustice. This wasn’t for anybody else, it was personal and close and for Will _only_.

Nico had the faintest smile as Will approached him. The tingling in his fingers didn’t vanish until he felt Nico’s hair in one hand and the curve of his waist in the other. An unmistakable chuckle so light and carefree escaped Nico as Will crashed their lips together. Will hadn’t realized how cold it physically was until he felt how _flushed_ Nico’s kiss could be. It was slow and building, and as Nico snaked his arms to Will’s sides, something clicked. He hadn’t before understood why people described kisses as fireworks, but as he softly shoved this boy – this beautiful, talented and _important_ boy – up against the brick wall, he knew what they meant. It wasn’t the actual explosion, but the childish expectations being fulfilled – the purest bliss – and Will wanted to live in this feeling. It was a kiss you gave when you thought it would be your last.

“It’s beautiful,” Will murmured and kissed him again. He could feel Nico smile into it. Will couldn’t phantom how the rest of the world evolved without feeling and tasting Nico di Angelo. He needed him closer, touching him more – because Nico smelled of the damp earth of a forest after rain and Will hadn’t been close enough for long enough to notice before, but now he did and he latched onto that smell. Engraved it into memory.

Nico grabbed the hem of Will’s jacket and pulled him in to deepen the kiss. He whispered, “Shut up.”

“I don’t even have your number.”

“Shut _up_ , Will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fucking finally, I've had that kiss written out since Christmas. It's nice to see that I had to rewrite the whole thing, though. It means the characters developed differently than I planned and I'm SO HAPPY about that. 
> 
> I touched so many issues in this chapter which is why it's. so. long.  
> This is the last chapter of THE FIRST ARC. It's gonna be two arcs in the same 'file' on AO3. This is not because I'm taking a break, HAH, I never take breaks, but I will be gone on several field courses in both April and May so who knows when the next one will be up.  
> If you have any questions or just want to talk to me about the story or whatever reason you have - (CORRECTING THE ITALIAN??) - feel free to message me on my tumblr, queennorthway


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